Mental health has held an uncertain and contentious place within disability studies, partly due to early focus on physical impairments. Reeve notes an avoidance of psychological issues, widening the disciplinary divide. Debates persist over whether mental distress qualifies as disability and whether distress from social exclusion should be addressed within the field, a point emphasized by feminist scholars.

State University of New York at Binghamton

- Critiques of Clinical Psychology
- Critiques of Disability Studies

Comparing Clinical Psychology and Disability Studies

Simpson, Jane, and Carol Thomas. Clinical Psychology and Disability Studies: Bridging the Disciplinary Divide on Mental Health and Disability. Disability & Rehabilitation, 2014. doi:10.3109/09638288.2014.961656.

Reference For: Clinical Psychology and Disability Studies: Bridging the Disciplinary Divide on Mental Health and Disability

Critiques on Disability Studies

From disability studies and social science perspectives, clinical psychology often adopts a medicalizing framework—equating disability with individual impairment and treating it as a deviation to be fixed. It focuses on the analytically isolated individual, favoring individual therapy over broader systemic approaches. The discipline’s narrow view of "systemic" care usually excludes societal and relational dynamics. Clinical psychology has historically overlooked the impact of social prejudice on disabled people’s mental health, often framing distress as a natural outcome of impairment. Disability studies critiques this as pathologizing, individualizing, and exclusionary, arguing that the true sources of distress are societal barriers and discrimination.

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