YorkSpace has migrated to a new version of its software. Access our Help Resources to learn how to use the refreshed site. Contact diginit@yorku.ca if you have any questions about the migration.
 

Major Research Papers - Critical Disability Studies

Permanent URI for this collection

Browse

Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 20 of 56
  • ItemOpen Access
    Embodied Worlds of Collective Love: Critically Re-Turning Liberation in My Burmese Disabled Poetry
    (2023-08) Yang, Yema; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel; viva davis halifax, nancy
    In the West, the main options for approaching disability are usually as follows: attempt to fix your disability through medical solutions or take on a disability identity to access communities, resources, and beliefs that are alternative from the medical model. However, these limited options mean many are not only excluded from disability dialogue altogether, but also cannot access care, community, or agency in the same way—especially if they cannot readily mesh with white, Western, and individualistic ways of thinking. This means that Indigenous, Black, Brown, transnational, and immigrant communities and beyond are often erased, missing, and neglected in disability discourse. And yet we are here anyway, disabled and debilitated in more ways than one, regardless of whether we’ve been able to access white Western care around disability. In my major research paper, I use my intersecting disabled Burmese experiences to highlight, honor, and nurture those non-Western ways of knowing and caring. I explore structural and relational perspectives of disability to move beyond identity-based disability, centering non-Western marginalized experiences and navigations of disability. As such, I excavate how communal love enables Burmese disabled existences and occasions of liberation. Using myself as a sample, I engage in critical autoethnographic poetic inquiry and a diffractive lens as a methodology for reflecting and honoring the fruition of my Burmese disabled self as it is born from communities. Ultimately, I inquire how the collectively-created self can create and house an intimate and political space of communal love to foster existence and collective liberation with others.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Thinking/Feeling Betwixt: Towards an Integrated Model of Disability & Mad Justice, Food Justice, and Harm Reduction
    (2023-08) Woolf, Emunah; davis halifax, nancy viva; Stiegman, Martha
    This Major Research Paper (MRP) offers a reflexive exploration at the intersection of Disability and Mad Justice (DMJ), Food Justice (FJ), and Harm Reduction (HR). While it is a step towards an integrated framework, it does not propose a tangible theory or model at its end. Rather, it offers a selection of thoughts, feelings, visuals, theories, frameworks, models, and methods that I encountered through this exploration. Each segment will introduce an area of thinking/feeling/writing and connect it into this intersectional area of inquiry. This thesis thus is a collage of others' work, to whom I am indebted, interspersed with my own thinking.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Mental Health Impact of Canadian Job Requirements and Recruitment Practices on Nigerian and African Professionals Transitioning into the Canadian Workspace
    (2023-10-10) Nwandu, Iwebunakiti; Raphael, Dennis; Vorstermans, Jessica
    Highly skilled Nigerian/African professionals who have immigrated to Canada through the express entry or other economic class program experience a significant level of discounting of their foreign-acquired skills and credentials as they attempt to transition into the Canadian workspace. The discounting of their skills and credentials often occurs during the job recruitment processes and/or as a result of Canadian job requirements (or licensing requirements for regulated professions) and recruitment practices that place outsize importance on Canadian work experience over their foreign-acquired work experience, creating a catch-22 situation where highly skilled Nigerian/African immigrants need a job in Canada to gain Canadian work experience but cannot access jobs that match their foreign acquired work experience without a Canadian job experience. Unfortunately, this situation forces them to either accept low/entry-level positions in their field of expertise (if available) or work in low-paying precarious jobs that they are overqualified or over-skilled for and unrelated to their expertise as they transition into the Canadian workspace. Studies have shown that African and Asian skilled immigrants experience the most severe devaluation of their foreign-acquired academic qualifications and trainings, and black African immigrants face increased vulnerability and are more likely to experience skill discounting, underemployment, discrimination, and lower income irrespective of their high human capital net worth (Buzdugan and Halli, 2009; DeSilva, 1997; Pendakur, 2000; Li, 2001, Batalova et al., 2016; Borch and Corra, 2010; Showers, 2015; Zong and Batalova, 2015) causing social disablement that results in depression, anxiety, frustration and other mental health distresses as they work to overcome these challenges to their socioeconomic integration in Canada. Social exclusion is an important social determinant of mental health and accounts for increased signs of anxiety, depression, and psychological distress among African immigrants. Studies have indicated that black people are the most disadvantaged group facing continuously high levels of negative racial and ethnic stereotyping, and few research reported concerns with depression and psychological distress during the acculturation of African immigrants (Akinsulure-Smith, 2017; Eguakun, 2020; Sellers et al., 2006; Venters et al., 2011, Sherinah et al., 2021). This research work aims to examine the mental health impact of Canadian job requirements and recruitment practices on Nigerian and African professionals transitioning into the Canadian workspace and seeks to provide answers to the research question, “How do Canadian job requirements and recruitment practices discriminate against Nigerian and African professionals, and put them in a disadvantageous position, causing depression and mental health distress as they transition to the Canadian workspace? To achieve this, ten (10) highly skilled Nigerian professionals who immigrated to Canada through the economic class immigration programs were interviewed, and their interviews were transcribed and analyzed. The results of the analyses of the transcribed interviews, among other revelations, revealed a persistent and significant level of discrimination and discounting of the foreign-acquired credentials, trainings, and skills of the participants and showed a disconnect between the employers, licensing bodies and Canadian immigration office.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Dreaming Peer Support Futures
    (2023-08) Prowse, Calvin; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel; halifax, nancy viva davis
    Drawing on practices of diffractive reading supported by zine-making methods, throughout this major research paper I explore the question: “what could a lens of futurity offer the discipline of consumer/survivor peer support?” In Chapter 1, I engage in a theoretical dialogue between the realm of peer support and notions of futurity to demonstrate the benefits and alignment of a futural (re)turn within the peer support sector, setting the stage for the rest of my analysis. In Chapter 2, I explicate the ways – the whys and hows – that peer supporters are exploited by the psychiatric industrial complex under neoliberal rule, grounded in a historical approach that draws on the frameworks of confluence (Joseph, 2015) and neuroliberalism (Moussa, 2019) so that we may “learn from the past” (Butler, 2000, p. 166) in order to better anticipate the future. In Chapter 3, I explore how the peer support sector is itself implicated in upholding systems of oppression (white supremacy, Western dominance, colonization, and colonialism) by troubling the “peer support origin story” and the current demographics of the field, as well as identifying what futures are currently in construction. Lastly, in Chapter 4, I explore how we can draw on the lessons of funga and flora to both locate ourselves within the present and dream peer support futures beyond the limits of realism.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Transnational Narratives of Access: Visually Impaired Activists in Canada and Cuba in Conversation
    (2023-08) Pike, Georgia Meredith; Vorstermans, Jessica; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel
  • ItemOpen Access
    Reimagining Psychosis: The Meaning-Making of Lived Psychotic Experiences
    (2023-08) McConnell, Madison; Reaume, Geoffrey; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel
    Tracing the lines between intersectional, marginalized Mad bodies, I illustrate a picture of psychotic Madness across borders, boundaries, and times, as well as the struggles of living this kind of existence while butting heads with Western psychiatry. Using feminist autotheory as a methodology, I weave my experiences with psychosis into a greater tapestry of what it means to be unwell, positing my own theories about how psychosis operates. Within my theorizing, I explore how ‘symptoms’ of psychotic ‘illness’ may be reconceptualized as coping mechanisms for survival in the midst of traumas and stressors. For example, some individuals develop ‘delusions,’ also known in less-clinical settings as strong beliefs, to contextualize their sensory-perceptual intrusions, such as hearing voices. Furthermore, I explore three case studies of different experiences with psychosis from mothers with postpartum psychosis to migrants and refugees with schizophrenia, questioning the nature of how these ‘illnesses’ are constructed, if they are even ‘illnesses’ at all. I dream of more holistic ways to think about and work with psychotic individuals, privileging their opinions and unravelling their stories of injustice and misrepresentation. Finally, I put forth alternatives to the biomedical treatments found in Western psychiatry, focussing instead on social support, such as peer support networks or affirming and validating one’s reality.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Gender in Autistic Late-Diagnosis Narratives
    (2023-07) Ellis, Kate; Nielsen, Emilia; Pyne, Jake
    In recent years, the discussion of how gender impacts autism diagnosis has been popular in both academic and lay contexts, such as social media. In psychology, the idea of the Female Autism Phenotype has particularly caught the attention of researchers as a possible explanation for why autistic women and girls are diagnosed later. However, studies related to gender and late autism diagnosis often do not consider how autistic adults personally perceive this link. Using thematic analysis, this study analyzes the blogs of late-diagnosed autistic adults to understand whether and how these individuals perceive a link between their gender and their timing of diagnosis. Critical discourse analysis is also used to understand how understandings of autism, group affiliations, and other factors may influence these perceptions. The study found that while the Female Autism Phenotype and similar theories have been favoured by bloggers in years past, they have not been regularly discussed by late-diagnosed bloggers in recent years. This indicates that autism researchers who focus on gender’s role in late-diagnosis may not be in line with autistic community priorities regarding autism research.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Compulsory Fitness and Nation Building: Anti-Fat Bias in Canadian Human Rights Law and Physical Education Curriculum
    (2023) DiGiammarino, Olivia; da Silveira-Gorman, Rachel
    This Major Research Paper (MRP) investigates the roots of anti-fat bias in Physical Education. Divided into three distinct chapters, this MRP begins by outlining current themes and understanding related to fat-bias in Physical Education through a scoping review of available academic literature. With the consideration that the Canadian public education system is funded by and overseen by the provincial government, the second chapter considers how fat discrimination is understood in the context of legal discrimination in Canada in an effort to better understand the vulnerability that students are subjected to when discriminated against in an educational setting. The last chapter of this MRP explores the grade 9 Physical Education curriculum for the 10 Canadian provinces through open-coding of anti-fat bias and neoliberal/citizenship rhetoric.
  • ItemOpen Access
    A Politics of Hope in the Narratives of People with Dementia
    (2005-10-05) O'Brien, Jennifer; Barton, Len
    The social model of disability challenges the notion of disability as a personal tragedy and reason for despair. Seven autobiographies written by people with dementia are analysed within the social model of disability for evidence of hope and hopelessness. Categories of hope and hopelessness delineated in this research include hope/despair for a cure, hope/despair for social inclusion and involvement, hope/despair related to voice (including being heard and taken seriously), hope/despair related to supports, hope/despair related to personal development, control, and survival, and other evidence of hope and hopelessness. An examination of how political hope expressed within these narratives contributes to the collective hope of people with dementia is included, as well as an exploration of implications for the larger disability rights movement.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Disabling Accessing: Barriers to Eye Gaze Technology for Students with Disabilities
    (2020-08) Sam, Alexander; Parekh, Gillian; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel
    This MRP is intended as a resource for parents, educators and support workers to identify systematic, financial, and training barriers for students. The research takes readers through Federal (i.e. Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms) and provincial legislation (i.e. Education Act [1990], Ontario Human Rights Code, Accessibility for Ontarians with Disability Act [2005]), disability support programs (i.e. ADP and SEA), as well as education policy (i.e. TDSB Accessibility Policy P069, TDSB Equity Policy P037, TDSB Special Education Plan [2017]) to highlight the government policy responses to disability in Canada and outlines how access to Eye Gaze technology encounters numerous barriers. The goal is to demonstrate the need for critical discourse focusing on the connection between historical discrimination and biases embedded in Canadian policy,and their role in perpetuating barriers to accessing assistive technology for students with disabilities. The Toronto District School Board is used as the setting, while Tobii Dynavox is the Eye Gaze technology vendor under review for analyzing how policy, programs and institutional practices enable or disable access for prospective students.Theoretical DiscussionAn analysis of the scientific (i.e. Biomedical, Functional) and social models of disability (i.e. Environmental, Human Rights) is used to illustrate how each perspective shapes understandings of disability differently, then moves to examining the dominant disability perspective guiding legislation, policy and programs affecting persons with disabilities in Canada. Both a human rights approach todisability and critical policy frameworks are used to analyze the context within which social and education policies are entrenched and administered in Canadian society, contributing to systematic, financial, procedural, and training barriers to accessingEye Gaze technology. ConclusionThe MRP concludes that scientific and biomedical models of disability have historically shaped government policy responses to disability and continue to do so today. Canadian policy and programs meant to facilitate access to Eye Gaze technology are guided by scientific understandings of disability, which embed systematic, proceduraland training barriers into policy programs that are supposed to provide funding support to overcome financial barriers. A list of 10 classroom recommendations for barrier free access to Eye Gaze technology is presented using the social model approach, to help parents, educators and support workers identify and eliminate obstacles for users. The MRP ends with a call for further discussion and scholarship of Eye Gaze technology in classrooms, which provides readers with 6 recommended areas of Eye Gaze technology research.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Embracing Ambiguity: Moving Toward Madness and Death in Performance
    (2020-08) Sabada, SK; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel; Mitchell, Allyson
    This MRP comprises two inter-related papers examining the intimacies of death and dying and their relationship to madness through performance.The first paper focuses on the use of alternate reality games (ARGs) as a medium of performance. In particular, through the exploration of my own ARG, I discuss the possibilities ARGs have for madness and death.I suggest that this format, unlike other mediums, has distinct features that would benefit mad and disabled artists intheir explorations of madness and disability. Through the articulation of the intimacies of death and dying and the abject, this paper also seeks to explore the further significance of their conceptual applications in discussions pertaining to mad subjectivity. The secondpaper seeks to examine the complex relationships between death, madness and performance through the invocation of the Intimacies of Death and Dying and the theatrical use of the Abject. This paper asks: What is it about the act of being alive, that qualifies us for being embodied subjects? Further, what does it mean for those of us whose embodiments are conditional?Through navigating these relationships, this paper tentatively examines what exploring these relationships might mean for mad subjectivities and dead embodiments in the context of performance.
  • ItemOpen Access
    The Creation of Barriers and Isolation for Seniors Through the Increased Societal Dependence of Technology During the COVID-19 Pandemic
    (2021-09-28) Li, Jessica; Raume, Geoffrey; Ahmad, Farah
    Research done in the past on senior technology and of the newer research done on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic provides deeper insights into the functional, structural, interpersonal, and intrapersonal barriers that seniors face when dealing with technology. Not only have devices and platforms not been made user-friendly for seniors with age-related declines, but the continuous attempts to push seniors intousingthe newest technologies have only built-up fear, anxiety and negative attitudes in seniors. Both society and seniors themselves need to address the ageist assumptions that they have about the limitations and behaviours associated with old age. The results and suggestions from this research will further advance the pre-existing research and add a relevant COVID-19 lens. Hopefully, it will also advance the field of critical disability scholarship and draw more attention to the discrimination seniors face because of their age.
  • ItemOpen Access
    ‘Broken Trust’ –A critical policy analysis of the difficulties faced by disabled intergenerational families seeking education and accommodation
    (2021-08-26) Lincoln, J N; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel; Parekh, Gillian
    As a result of the presence of racialized, gendered, and socio-economic bias within educational policies intended to assist disabled individuals, many students and their families often encounter abusive and negative accommodation experiences. These failures are particularly damaging during the transition out of high school and even more so within post secondary institutions themselves.Employing the educational policy analysis model created by Diem, Young, Wilton, Mansfield, and Lee (2014) in their paper entitled “The intellectual landscape of critical policy analysis” this major research paper explores several policies which impact students during these transition periods and highlights the failures that they repeatedly encounter. The personal story of the author is also woven into the analysis to show that there is a human side of this experience which must be included to truly expose the brutal nature of these policy failures. It is shown throughout that even though policy is crafted with rhetoric that may seem beneficial to the disabled recipient, the intent is often one of control, suppression, and reinforcement of the aforementioned negative biases.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Care Work in the Camp: An Institutional Ethnography of Care Work in Developmental Services Through a Critical Examination of the Problematizations in SIPDDA and QAM
    (2020-08) Fernandes, Sabine; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel; Tam, Louise
    In this Major Research Paper (MRP) I provide an institutional ethnography of care work in developmental services in Ontario through a critical examinationof the Services and Supports to Promote the Social Inclusion of Persons with Developmental Disabilities Act (SIPDDA, 2008) and the Act’s Quality Assurance Measures regulation (QAM). In accessing ways of knowing produced by Black and Indigenous history, critical race/ disability/ queer theory, political philosophy and economy, Black and brown anarchist and abolitionist knowledge, Afrofuturism, and autoethnographic narrative, this work is my attempt to affirm the tidal wave of collective rage, grief, resilience, and hope I am swept up in, crashing against the brittle, unimaginative, violent, and deadly landscapes of white supremacy. I use Carol Bacchi’s “What’s the Problem Represented to be?” (WPR) approach (Bacchi, 2012) as the outline for this MRP. The application of WPR is grounded in the understanding that the ways in which problems are identified reveal specific biases, shaping how we know ourselves and others (Bacchi, 2012). I engage Agamben’s (1998) theory of bare lifein conjunction with WPR, to locate carceral sites and categories of political life in the settler state. In my subversion of the epistemological foundations of SIPDDA and QAM –white supremacist, cisheteropatriarchal,eugenic,and ableist ways of knowing–I advocate Fritsch’s (2010) envisioning of intercorporealityas a process of abolishing the carceral conditions of care work and caring with people labelled with developmental disabilities.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Ableism, Intersectionality, Power and Knowledge: The Complexities of Navigating Accommodations in Postsecondary Institutions
    (2020-10-27) Brown, Zahra J.; Gorman, Rachel; Isrealite, Neita
    Although post-secondary educational institutions have been mandated by law to accommodate, the issue of students with disabilities receiving accommodation remains problematic. One factor that is relevant, but often overlooked, is how power functions in the process of seeking and receiving accommodation. My interest is to critically examine selected parts of my lived experiences with accommodation at three post-secondary institutions to shed light upon how power, knowledge and intersectionality function for students seeking and receiving accommodation. I argue that a successful navigation of accommodation at postsecondary institutions does not depend only on the institution’s duty to accommodate but also on these factors. My literature review employs constructs proposed by several scholars to explain the complexities of accommodation. These include: 1) Kimberlé Crenshaw’s Black Feminist conceptualization of intersectionality and the need for a multiple axis framework to understand the dilemma that Black women present, 2) Patricia Hill Collins’ Black Feminist Thought and its emphasis on categories of analyses that address unequal power relationships between parties, 3) Richard Clark Eckert and Amy June Rowley’s notion of audism as embodying supremacy, 4) Michel Foucault’s articulation of discourse analyses of knowledge and power, and 5) Teri Hibbs and Dianne Pothier’s analysis of how power functions in the accommodation process. I apply these notions to an auto-ethnographic case study of my own experiences in postsecondary institutions as black, woman and student with disabilities. The results of my analysis as well as my recommendations will advance scholarship in the area of accommodation and disabilities.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Youth Disability and the Post-conflict Justice Reform: A Case Study of Sierra Leone
    (2020-08-31) Sesay, Hassan; Sesay, Mohamed; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel
    Disabled youth encounter systemic social injustice, social exclusion, social inequality, bias, anti-discrimination, and unjust incarceration within society and the justice system. In Sierra Leone, a developing country emerging from a decade-long civil war (1991-2002), these challenges, attitudes, and perceptions towards disabled people have persisted, despite the implementation of a post-conflict peacebuilding agenda that included justice sector reforms. Although Sierra Leone ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability on October 4, 2010, and the Persons with Disability Act entered into force in March 2011, there remains a challenge in addressing issues affecting disabled people. To date, as a significant number of youth with disabilities roam the streets, the country still lacks an effective mechanism of restorative justice to help those with disabilities in conflict with the law. The MRP argues that the challenges have persisted in Sierra Leone because of a confluence of social, institutional, and capacity problems which were compounded by the civil war and neglected in post-conflict reform efforts. At the institutional level, Sierra Leone has a weak sociolegal and justice framework, incapable of addressing the welfare and concerns of people with disability, particularly youth who come in conflict with the law. While there are desirable policies and rules at the formal level, the justice system lacks the requisite training, facilities, and resources to uphold the rights of disabled people and its operation often exacerbates their plight. The failure to prioritize these concerns has also meant that societal prejudices, reinforced by poor socioeconomic conditions, have prevailed with little social assistance to families and communities. Since the war ended, successive governments have devoted their limited resources to the pressing issues of security and justice, often at the expense of the concerns and needs of disabled people. This lack of attention to the peculiar needs and circumstances of disabled people must, however, are placed within the context of a weak post-conflict economy, collapsed infrastructure, and the prevalence of discriminatory attitudes and practices in society. In this context, cultural belief systems and policies which stigmatize disabled people thrive as communities and families look for excuses not to devote their limited resources to society’s most vulnerable members.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Embracing Ambiguity: Moving Toward Madness and Death in Performance
    (2020-08-24) Sabada, SK; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel; Mitchell, Allyson
    This MRP comprises two inter-related papers examining the intimacies of death and dying and their relationship to madness through performance. The first paper focuses on the use of alternate reality games (ARGs) as a medium of performance. In particular, through the exploration of my own ARG, I discuss the possibilities ARGs have for madness and death. I suggest that this format, unlike other mediums, has distinct features that would benefit mad and disabled artists in their explorations of madness and disability. Through the articulation of the intimacies of death and dying and the abject, this paper also seeks to explore the further significance of their conceptual applications in discussions pertaining to mad subjectivity. The second paper seeks to examine the complex relationships between death, madness and performance through the invocation of the Intimacies of Death and Dying and the theatrical use of the Abject. This paper asks: What is it about the act of being alive, that qualifies us for being embodied subjects? Further, what does it mean for those of us whose embodiments are conditional? Through navigating these relationships, this paper tentatively examines what exploring these relationships might mean for mad subjectivities and dead embodiments in the context of performance.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Disabling Access: Barriers to Eye Gaze Technology for Students with Disabilities
    (2020-08-12) Sam, Alexander; Parekh, Gillian; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel
    The MRP concludes that scientific and biomedical models of disability have historically shaped government policy responses to disability and continue to do so today. Canadian policy and programs meant to facilitate access to Eye Gaze technology are guided by scientific understandings of disability, which embed systematic, procedural and training barriers into policy programs that are supposed to provide funding support to overcome financial barriers. A list of 10 classroom recommendations for barrier free access to Eye Gaze technology is presented using the social model approach, to help parents, educators and support workers identify and eliminate obstacles for users. The MRP ends with a call for further discussion and scholarship of Eye Gaze technology in classrooms, which provides readers with 6 recommended areas of Eye Gaze technology research.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Care Work in the Camp: An Institutional Ethnography of Care Work in Developmental Services through a Critical Examination of the Problematizations in SIPDDA and QAM
    (2020-08-24) Fernandes, Sabine A.; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel; Tam, Louise
    In this Major Research Paper (MRP) I provide an institutional ethnography of care work in developmental services in Ontario through a critical examination of the Services and Supports to Promote the Social Inclusion of Persons with Developmental Disabilities Act (SIPDDA, 2008) and the Act’s Quality Assurance Measures regulation (QAM). In accessing ways of knowing produced by Black and Indigenous history, critical race/ disability/ queer theory, political philosophy and economy, Black and brown anarchist and abolitionist knowledge, Afrofuturism, and autoethnographic narrative, this work is my attempt to affirm the tidal wave of collective rage, grief, resilience, and hope I am swept up in, crashing against the brittle, unimaginative, violent, and deadly landscapes of white supremacy. I use Carol Bacchi’s “What’s the Problem Represented to be?” (WPR) approach (Bacchi, 2012) as the outline for this MRP. The application of WPR is grounded in the understanding that the ways in which problems are identified reveal specific biases, shaping how we know ourselves and others (Bacchi, 2012). I engage Agamben’s (1998) theory of bare life in conjunction with WPR, to locate carceral sites and categories of political life in the settler state. In my subversion of the epistemological foundations of SIPDDA and QAM – white supremacist, cisheteropatriarchal, eugenic, and ableist ways of knowing – I advocate Fritsch’s (2010) envisioning of intercorporeality as a process of abolishing the carceral conditions of care work and caring with people labelled with developmental disabilities.