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it's 15 Dec, 2024 3:59 pm

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Disabilities

Background

This information is about the specific health area mentioned above. It comprises a combination of textual and video information, on our site and on external sites.  We will be adding new specific health areas and further information continually.

The idea is for you to understand more about the health area you are addressing before you get too far building your action plan.

General Information

Disability isn’t always obvious. Sometimes it’s unclear whether someone’s issue is a disability.  Whether someone is considered to be disabled they are protected from discrimination by the Equality Act 2010 – see the Citizens Advice info on what counts as disability here.

The World Health Organisation say about disability:

“Disability is part of being human. Almost everyone will temporarily or permanently experience disability at some point in their life. Over one billion people – about 15% of the global population – live with some form of disability and this number is increasing.

Disability results from the interaction between individuals with a health condition such as cerebral palsy, down syndrome and depression as well as personal and environmental factors including negative attitudes, inaccessible transportation and public buildings, and limited social support.

People with disability experience poorer health outcomes, have less access to education and work opportunities, and are more likely to live in poverty than those without a disability.

Very often people with disability do not receive the healthcare services they need. Evidence shows that half of people with disability cannot afford healthcare. People with disability are also more than twice as likely to find healthcare providers’ skills inadequate.

Great progress has been made to make the world more accessible for people living with disability but much more work is required to meet their needs.”

People with disabilities have rights.

 

Background Information

There is information available which will help you formulate your action plan – both on our site and on external sites.

On our site

MindDrive

MindDrive is all about understanding more about yourself. Helping you manage your mental issues or how to develop positive thoughts and goal setting as well as managing conflict and emotions.

Your mental state defines much about you.  If you’re feeling good, nothing is beyond you.  If you’re feeling down, however, it feels as though you can’t cope.  It can be much more extreme.

We have relevant information on MindDrive
Personality

Welcome to PersonalityDrive (still being built)

Personality is one of the most complex area of the body, you cannot touch It, feel it, monitor it, isolate it, treat it but yet it can influence every part of the body positively or negatively. Every personality is made up uniquely based upon DNA and life events. It can change over time and is sensitive to its surroundings. It can become damaged or developed by external circumstances. It influences our match making preferences, our social circles and our wellbeing.  There is much written about our personality but yet many don’t know their own personality or pay much attention to It until we are emotionally intelligent enough to manage it. There is a lot of articles about different aspects of personality but very few pull all the areas together in one place. We have attempted to take a holistic approach to personality and character.

 

We have relevant information on Personality

On external site(s)

Understood have a good article showing signs of learning thinking differences in adults, with links on specific subjects.  A brief summary is shown below – click the link to see the full article with links.

Learning and thinking differences are lifelong issues.

Learning and thinking differences can run in families.

With the right support, adults with learning and thinking differences can manage their symptoms and find success.

Some people think learning and thinking differences only affect children. But adults can have them too. That’s because learning and thinking differences are lifelong issues.

Maybe there are certain tasks and situations you’ve struggled with since childhood. Things like staying focused and organized, writing down information or changing routines may be hard for you. You may even see your own child coping with the same difficulties and wonder if it’s related to what you’re experiencing.

Learning and thinking differences aren’t something you outgrow. And some conditions run in families, like ADHD. For instance, you might not be as hyperactive as your child with ADHD, but you may show other signs, like frequently losing track of things.

If you suspect you may have a learning or thinking difference, talk to your doctor. He or she can refer you to a professional who evaluates adults.

Keep in mind that having learning and thinking differences doesn’t mean a person isn’t intelligent. The key is to recognize the signs and seek out supports that can help.

YouthVillage is a South African youth portal site.  It has an article on how to overcome disability barriers.  The article is shown below – there is more information on the site.

Here’s how you can overcome disability barriers in 10 steps……..

  1. Stay focused on the positives instead of the negatives. No matter what obstacles have come my way, staying positive has allowed me to overcome them. When I was in tenth grade, I had to miss 29 days of school in order to have major back surgery, where seven vertebrae were removed due to spinal cord compression. I knew that the back surgery was crucial and I found a way to make up the school work that I had missed. Staying positive allowed me to keep up with my classmates and graduate on time.
  2. Don’t ever give up. When I first moved out to Los Angeles after growing up in Boston, I went on one hundred job interviews before starting my current position. If I wasn’t right for those one hundred positions, I knew there still had to be an opportunity out there for me.
  3. Challenge yourself and try new things every day. As soon as I wake up in the morning, I encounter a new challenge — whether it’s trying to reach something high in the kitchen or volunteering to participate in an optional pitch lunch at work. As long as you try, that’s all that matters in the end.
  4. Each day you should ask yourself if you’re happy. If there’s something that’s making you unhappy, you should find a way to make change. I find myself unhappy whenever I’m surrounded by negative people. Now I’m more cautious of the people with whom I surround myself.
  5. Smile. A smile goes a long way. Whenever people are staring or laughing at me for whatever reason, keeping a smile on my face causes them to wonder why I don’t react.
  6. Don’t compare yourself to others and find time to celebrate your little accomplishments. I always set my own goals. Although we all wish we could get there as fast as it seems others have, I’ve found ways to enjoy the journey and celebrate each little success on the way. After missing almost a whole season on the youth soccer team, due to my back surgery during the spring of my sophomore year in college, I found a way to play in the last game of the season. I never scored a goal but participating was just as important to me. After long recovery, this was a huge accomplishment for me.
  7. Be polite and stay calm with obnoxious people. Even if somebody makes fun of you, there are ways to turn around the situation. When someone makes fun of you, keep your dignity. Be aware that heckler has just destroyed his or her reputation. A sarcastic remark or two can help – judge your timing and the reactions of people around the heckler. Be funnier  than they are, especially in public situations with plenty of witnesses.
  8. Let yourself grieve and go through all five stages of grief about your disability. Seek real support from therapists, counselors and trusted friends or family members. Learn to judge who’s genuinely supportive and who’s pitying – pity is just another flavor of humiliation and usually covers up the other’s terror of winding up in your situation. Do your best not to take out your grief on the people in your life who are genuinely trying to help, even if they’re not good at it.
  9. Accept your disability. This is the most difficult part as it can be very discouraging. Accept that you may never walk, hear or see again and that you can still enjoy life. If your disability can be changed with physical therapy and treatment, seize the day and fight it every day. Accepting your disability means grieving the loss of a normal status with no stigma against you and a life without enormous inconvenience.
  10. Do your best. You didn’t have a choice about being disabled but how well you live with it is a choice, every day. It’s much more important to pat yourself on the back for your successes than to beat yourself up for failures . Don’t judge yourself by other people, learn what you can really do and take any progress as something to build on.

Video

Sometimes the owner of a video will not allow the video to be played on external sites.  If you see the video is unavailable on the left just click the ‘WATCH NOW’ link on the right and the video will play in a new window.

My Struggle with Learning Disabilities and How to Deal with Them

This is a 10 minute video from KatherineChloeCahoon on her struggle with learning disabilities.  She says:

“This video was extremely hard for me to make. There are no cuts in it. I was afraid that if I stopped I wouldn’t get through it. After repeatedly meeting people facing similar challenges, I felt that I should publicly share my story in the hope of helping them realize that they’re not alone, and that there are ways to cope.”

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Questionnaire

In order for you to assess what you know about this health area, we suggest using a questionnaire. This might help you understand your situation in this area, or taking it might improve your understanding of the area.

You may be able to take this questionnaire online – either here on our site or on an external site – or download it and complete it on paper – it depends on copyright (and whether we’ve managed to build it on our site!).

The ways you can take a questionnaire:

PDF for download, More than one external site questionnaire, Questionnaire on our site

Take Questionnaire on our site

You can take a questionnaire on our site. This will score the questions automatically and give you a summary showing what your score means.

Our Questionnaire

Our questionnaire is aimed at seeing how much you understand disability and disabled people.  It’s 20 true or false questions.

This quiz is no longer available.

Take questionnaire on external site

You can take this questionnaire on at least one external site.

The Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability have a 20 question quiz aimed at determining your disability literacy here.

 

Learning disabilities (LDs) are not limited to children. In fact, quite a few adults discover that an underlying LD was the cause of many of their frustrations in school and the workplace.The verywellfamily have a learning disability test for adults.

Learning Disabilities in Adults

Could you be an adult with a learning disability? The Learning Disabilities Association of America offers guidance about the screening process for learning disabilities in the adult workforce.2 A LD screening can only be performed by a qualified professional.

The issues that are evaluated during an adult LD screening may include the following:

Does the person confuse similar letters or numbers, reverse them, or confuse their order?

Does the person have difficulty reading the newspaper, following small print, and/or following columns?

Does the person have difficulty completing job applications correctly?

Does the person have difficulty writing ideas on paper?

Does the person have persistent problems with sentence structure, writing mechanics, and organizing written work?

Does the person have trouble dialing phone numbers or reading addresses?

Does the person reverse or omit letters, words, or phrases when writing?

Does the person often misread or miscopy?

Does the person spell the same word differently in one document?

Is the person able to explain things orally, but not in writing?

Download questionnaire and take it yourself

You can download at least one questionnaire from our site.  You will have to score the questionnaire yourself.

Disabilities can be obvious and visible, but aren’t always.  Do you treat people with disabilities the way they want to be treated?  Our questionnaire from the USA gives you 20 true or false questions which might help you find out.

 

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All areas of health are interlinked

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Find your initial focus

You might think that physical, financial and mental health are quite separate, and for some people they are. However, often a problem in one area has a knock-on effect on others. Losing your job can lead to anxiety and depression, which can turn you to drink and impact your health.

You might have a severe issue in one area but that can lead to problems in other areas, and the people treating you for the first problem won’t be equipped to deal with these linked issues.

For example, doctors and nurses can treat you for a physical problem but can’t advise you about your job or finances.  Nor for the anxiety that comes with it, apart from prescribing some drugs, which might or might not be the best solution.

We encourage you to take a holistic view – we look at all areas and offer support across the whole spectrum.

health areas interlinked

Even this view of health is simplistic, as you’ll discover later if you go down that route.  You might want to consider overall health, or wellness or wellbeing, which include additional types of health, such as occupational health (how you are in your job).   Then there’s happiness and quality of life – how do these fit?

If you’re interested in that, click the link here to see more information.

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Health Areas in Domains

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Domains

We break down the overall concept of health or wellness into ‘bite-sized chunks’ that we can actually do something about.  The first level we call health domains. 

We like the Life of Wellness site and we have chosen the following domains.

1. Emotional Wellness: Awareness and acceptance of feelings
2. Spiritual Wellness: A search for meaning and purpose
3. Intellectual Wellness: Recognition of your creativity, knowledge and skills
4. Physical Wellness: Need for physical activity and balanced nutrition
5. Environmental Wellness: Positive awareness and impact on your environment
6. Financial Wellness: Debt reduction, cash flow balance or financial future planning
7. Occupational Wellness: Personal achievement and enrichment from your career
8. Social Wellness: Contribution to your community

Health Areas

Within each domain, we have included a number of health areas. These are specific issues that you can tackle.  Within each health area, e.g. Depression, we have built additional information and exercises which you can do to help in the area. You can create your own Action Plan to address this area, and see

Emotional: Anxiety, Compassion Fatigue, Depression, Gambling, Laughter, Narcissistic, Personality Disorder, Sleep, Stress

Environmental: Environmental Issues, Greenness

Financial: Debt, Family Finance, Financial Planning, Financial Wellness

Intellectual: IQ, Personality, Procrastination

Occupational: Jobs for Different Personality Types, Retirement Income, Work Life Balance

Physical: Alcohol, Disabilities, Dizziness, Drugs, Fitness, Food Preferences, General Health, Healthy Ageing, Illness, Nutrition, Sleep Apnea, Smoking

Social: Communication Skills, Communication Styles, Domestic Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Love Partnerships, Mental Abuse, Parenting Styles, Sexual Addiction

Spiritual: Are You Sensitive, Mystical Guidance, Spirituality

Each health area has supporting information and its own questionnaire.

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Understand Health

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Physical, financial and mental health

One definition of health is:

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. 

The NHS define health as: ‘We use a broad definition of health that encompasses both physical and mental health, as well as wellbeing. This means we are not only interested in whether or not people are ill or have a health condition, but also in how healthy and well they are.’

We believe we also have to consider financial health, as this can easily impact physical and mental health. Click the button to see an example of how these are connected.

 It gets more complicated…

What is Health? How about Wellness, Wellbeing or Happiness?

The Active Wellbeing Society (TAWS) define Health as a state of the overall mental and physical state of a person; the absence of disease. They define Wellbeing or wellness as a way of life that aims to enhance well-being and refers to a more holistic whole-of-life experience which also includes emotional and spiritual aspects of life.  We expand on this definition of health to include financial health and mental health, to make it synonymous with wellbeing or wellness.  

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Health domains

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We break down the overall concept of health or wellness into ‘bite-sized chunks’ that we can actually do something about.  The first level we call health domains.

We like the Life of Wellness site and we have chosen the following domains.

1. Emotional Wellness: Awareness and acceptance of feelings
2. Spiritual Wellness: A search for meaning and purpose
3. Intellectual Wellness: Recognition of your creativity, knowledge and skills
4. Physical Wellness: Need for physical activity and balanced nutrition
5. Environmental Wellness: Positive awareness and impact on your environment
6. Financial Wellness: Debt reduction, cash flow balance or financial future planning
7. Occupational Wellness: Personal achievement and enrichment from your career
8. Social Wellness: Contribution to your community

wellness wheel

Health Areas

Within each domain, we have included a number of health areas. These are specific issues that you can tackle.  Within each health area, e.g. Depression, once you have subscribed we have built additional information and exercises which you can do to help in the area.

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See which domains you should address

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Having established that we use 8 domains, you need to understand which you should concentrate on.

The 8 are:

  • Emotional
  • Environmental
  • Financial
  • Intellectual
  • Occupational
  • Physical
  • Social
  • Spiritual

 

You can take a questionnaire, which scores you in each domain.  You can decide which domains you are strong in, and which you need to improve.

Another analysis shows which domains you should look at, but also which domains you want to look at.

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Locus of Control

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  • We want to help people in all aspects of their health  – physical, financial and mental. We also provide detailed explanations of how overall health (or well-being) is measured.
  • We believe these things are often linked, so we try and address health holistically. We are building templates, questionnaires and exercises to help you identify what’s important to you.
  • We think people should try and take responsibility for  of their own health as much as they can.  See below for what that means.

People look at things differently.  Some people believe things happen to them, while others believe they can influence what happens to them. Technically this is called the ‘locus of control’.  People can have an Internal or external Locus of Control

So how do you see things?

Psychology Today have a 15 minute test which gives you a summary of your position you can buy the detailed results if you want to.

My Personality Test have a 10 minute test which gives you a summary.

People tend to take more responsibility (locus gets more internal) as they get older.  However, external isn’t always bad – for example if you are physically unable to do some things you can accept it and focus on the things you can do.  This American video explains the concept and gives examples of how this can affect relationships.

locus of control

Internal

  • More likely to take responsibility for actions
  • Tend to be less influenced by others

External

  • Blame outside forces for what happens
  • Don’t believe they can change their situation themselves

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Add your attitude to change - see how you view changes in your life

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Do you need to change?

No matter how healthy you are at the moment, the chances are that there are some areas you could improve. It may be that you have a real problem in one or more areas, and you would like to make some improvements.

At YouDrive we accept that there are many different degrees of ‘not wellness’ in a large number of different health areas, ranging from physical illness such as covid-19 through mental illness such as anxiety through to financial problems like debt.  We try and help where the problem ranges from ‘slight’ to quite bad’ – after this expert help and intervention may be needed.

However, especially in these times, we have to try and make these changes ourselves, possibly with some help from others, whether remotely or face to face.

The thing is, to make an improvement we have to change some things.

This involves changing our behaviour in some respects, and that’s not always easy.

Henry Ford, the creator of the assembly line, is quoted as saying “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”.  

henry ford

Another way of looking at this: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” – attributed to Albert Einstein.

Consequently we need to make some changes.  The problem is that we have already developed a lot of habits, some of which we need to break and replace by better ones.  Some of our bad habits have become entrenched, and the bad results they create in turn engender further bad habits to develop – in effect the bad habits can feed on themselves.

We need to understand how we can make changes and stick to them, and that’s what this part of your health profile is about.

It will involve some learning, through reading, some videos and some additional information and also seeing how you react to change currently.

It will also ask you to consider whether you feel you are in charge of your future, or whether you feel it’s all fate.

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Assess your overall health using a health questionnaire

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At YouDrive we try and help people improve their health. We use ‘health’ but we understand there are other terms such as wellbeing or even happiness that reflect how we are doing in our lives – if you’re interested in the different definitions and ideas see our page on the subject.

We want to help whether you have a particular problem – physical, financial or mental – or if you just want to improve some specific part of your life or just make some improvements overall.

You’d be surprised, but there has been a serious amount of scientific work done in this area over the last twenty years.

So first we allow you to assess your current health (or wellbeing, or happiness).  We do this by questionnaire.  Which one is determined by the type of person you are:

  1. You understand yourself well and want a quick overview of your health and wellness, and will drill down in any areas needing work
  2. You want to do a more detailed assessment and then focus on areas you’re already aware of
  3. You want to look at the whole situation in more detail across all the health domains.

By the way, we take your privacy seriously – we collect information that you choose to provide but we de-identify it as much as possible and will never share it with anyone without your explicit consent.

You can then drill down into some specific areas and there are more questionnaires to see your situation in these particular areas.  We provide you with specific information and refer you to other potential aspects of help. Our next step is to build a personalised action plan – for now we will make a suggestion for you to develop your own plan and then after a time you can see whether this has had a positive impact by retaking the test.

In future we will be engaging with medical and behavioural specialists to devise action plans for individual people with specific situations.

We have an overall questionnaire which you can complete which will assess your current state.

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Values, Attitudes and Beliefs

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We all have our beliefs, attitudes and values – these have developed throughout our life based on who we are and what we have done. Let’s look at what these are.

The University of Reading explain: “People’s values, beliefs and attitudes are formed and bonded over time through the influences of family, friends, society and life experiences. So, by the time you’re an adult, you can hold very definite views on just about everything with a sense of “no one is going to change my mind”.

The combination of your personal values, beliefs and attitudes are your moral principles that guide you in life and affect your behaviour. However, your views can wildly differ to others and in an institution such as a school, these beliefs may be counter to the values of the school, child development or indeed the law.” 

Let’s look more closely at the differences between beliefs, attitudes and values.

Beliefs

These come from real experiences – we think our beliefs are based on reality, but in fact our beliefs colour our experiences; also, an original experience e.g. when we were a child is not the same as what’s happening now. Beliefs can be moral, religious or cultural and reflect who we are. They can be rational (‘it gets colder in winter’) or irrational (‘I am never going to make something of myself’).

Attitudes

This is an immediate belief or disposition about something specific. It is a recurring group of beliefs and behaviours aimed at specific groups, people, ideas or objects. They will normally be positive or negative and we will always behave that way to the target group. Examples of attitudes include confidence (I can or can’t do something), grateful (I an entitled to / grateful for XXX) and cheerful (I am generally happy / miserable).

Values

These are things (principles or qualities) that we hold in high regard or consider to be worthwhile or right / wrong. They are formed by a belief related to the worth of something – an idea or behaviour. Some values are common (e.g. family comes first, the value of friendship) or cultural (which the whole community have – see video at Study.com here)

The theory

Links to Wikipedia

Expectancy Value Theory suggests you balance your beliefs about something with the value you attach to it. The Theory of Reasoned Action suggests that beliefs and evaluation about behavioural outcomes determine attitudes, and intentions lead directly to behaviour.

Beliefs

Expressions of confidence – can change over time

Attitudes

Learned predispositions to something – are subject to change

Values

Ideals that guide our behaviour – Generally long lasting and often need life changing experience to change

Iceberg demonstrating implicit and explicit bias – from Owlcation

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A Butterfly Life: 4 Keys to More Happiness, Better Health and Letting Your True Self Shine

Times of change can be a challenge, no doubt! Whether it’s a relationship breakup, job loss, or being diagnosed with a serious health issue. Or you may WANT things to be different, but it feels a little scary or overwhelming. The butterfly reminds us change can be beautiful, even necessary, in order to realize our full potential and live our best life.