Sometimes, when interviewing a person with an obvious disability, professionals assume it is more polite to ignore crutches, missing limbs, wheelchairs, or even canes indicating blindness. However, as stated earlier with regard to race and culture, asking directly about the “difference” is usually welcomed. Such questions as “Have you used a wheelchair all your life, or is it a more recent addition?” can open the door to a candid discussion of the disability.

Facing and managing a disability affect all areas of an individual’s life. However, too often, mental health professionals without rehabilitation training do not know how to calibrate the presence of the disability. The disability is either treated as the de?ning feature of the individual, overshadowing all else, or it is ignored; ignoring a disability implies that it really should not have any direct impact on the emotional and interpersonal functioning of the individual.

Men who have accepted their disabilities or chronic conditions often have adopted a new set of values that replace the dominant male values in society. This process may take a good deal of time, depending upon the man’s special circumstances, personality, and social situation.

-A Man’s Guide to Coping with Disability

The Religiously Committed

The challenge of ministry is to help people in very concrete situations-people with illnesses or in grief, people with physical or mental handicaps, people suffering from poverty and oppression, people caught in the complex networks of secular or religious institutions-to see and experience their story as part of God’s ongoing redemptive work in the world.

While it is wise to rule out so called organic disorders, the diagnosis of psychophysiologic conditions should be made positively and not by exclusion. A diagnosis by exclusion is not a diagnosis. It says, ?I don?t know what this is and therefore it?s probably tension induced.? Rather the diagnostician should say, ?Now that I have eliminated the possibility that there is a tumor or cancer I can proceed with confidence since this physical condition I am looking at has all the signs and symptoms of an emotionally induced process.? That is rarely done, however, for most practicingHealing Back Pain physicians either do not recognize the disorder as psychophysiologic, or if they do, treat it symptomatically as though it were organic.

The Role of Fear in TMS Severity of TMS is measured not only by the intensity of the pain but by the degree of physical disability that exists. What things is the person afraid of or unable to do? Disability may be more important than pain because it defines the individual?s ability to function personally, professionally, socially and athletically.

In the long run fear and preoccupation with physical restrictions are more effective as a psychological defense than pain. A severe attack of pain may be over in a few days, but if the person is afraid to do things for fear of inducing another attack or because he or she has found that the activity will invariably bring on pain, even if it is not an acute attack, then the preoccupation with the body is continuous and the defense is working all the time. In the majority of patients with whom I work this is the most important factor.