Understanding the positive, as well as the negative, impact of a child with an intellectual disability will lead to a more balanced view of families and disability, say researchers from the University of California.

It is only within the past decade or two that researchers have considered the “positive impact of the child” worthy of empirical study, say Jan Blacher and Bruce L.Baker.

By contrast, for over half a century, published research has been focused on negative impacts of children with mental retardation on their families. Although a more balanced view of families and disability is certainly a conceptual step forward, there is still little well-controlled research on positive impact.

They conclude that parents are much more likely to report a positive impact if their children don’t have significant behavior problems. (But isn’t that also true for families in which the children don’t have a disability?)

Here’s what Britain’s been buzzing about: a wave of reports of violence against people with disabilities. In some of these reports, vulnerable people are attacked on the street; in others, they are befriended by groups of people who then exploit and kill them. No one disputes that the stories are grisly. Still, it’s not clear whether such crimes are on the upswing, or whether they are being covered more frequently in the media.

Disability columnist Tom Shakespeare, writing in the BBC’s Ouch magazine, writes from personal experience about “nasty incidents” in which he was chased, mocked and photographed by groups of teenagers. He sees experiences like these not as hate crimes but as incidents of bullying in an increasingly polarized society.

Hate crime, rare as it is, should perhaps be regarded as the tip of the iceberg. Of equal concern is the widespread experience of bullying and social exclusion which is usually unreported, but which makes many disabled people feel unsafe and unhappy.

We need a culture of zero tolerance against abuse of disabled people in any form, and we need to take collective responsibility for inclusion. Of course, the police should take hate crime against disabled people more seriously. But parents, teachers, employers and even passers-by have a role to play too. Bullying is ubiquitous and it is getting worse. We need to stop it now.

Related stories:

• Man admits urinating on ill woman
• Men tip woman out of wheelchair

Other stories listed on Shakespeare’s site.

And this one from Canada: Wheelchair victim: Brutal assault on man outside church

People with disabilities or chronic illness are the most frequent participants in clinical trials. But what protections do they have? Very little, says an inspector general’s report.

Among the report’s findings:

• The Food and Drug Administration does very little to ensure the safety of the millions of people who participate in clinical trials.
• Federal officials don’t keep track of clinical trials, almost never audit them, and don’t enforce safety rules when they do.

None of this will come as a surprise to scientific investigators, who for years have known that federal oversight of research on humans is toothless at best, and lags far behind oversight of research on animals.

The New York Times account documents the case of a woman who tried to withdraw from a research study only to be imprisoned against her will and dosed with the experimental drug over her objections. Although federal authorities were notified, an FDA inspector did not arrive at the research facility for more than nine months and the official letter of warning from the FDA did not come until more than two years after the woman’s imprisonment.

Indeed, since no one collects the data systematically there is no way to tell how safe the nation’s clinical research is or ever has been.

‘Paralyzed at the pump’

From CBS2 in Chicago:

A hidden-camera investigation by CBS2 in Chicago and the Naperville (Illinois) Sun found that service stations repeatedly violate a federal law created to help people with disabilities access gasoline.

Of nine suburban gas stations monitored, just one — a Shell station — provided assistance to a driver with disabilities. In the other cases, drivers with disabilities were helped only after long waits or after clerks were prompted by the station’s undercover investigators.

“Unfortunately, I think failure to provide accommodations to people with disabilities at gas stations is very prevalent,” says Barry Taylor, legal advocacy director at the nonprofit group Equip for Equality. “I think it is actually shocking that 17 years after the ADA (American With Disabilities Act) was passed, we’re still having such flagrant violations of federal law. … It’s not only a civil rights violation, I think it’s bad business.”

Click here for the hidden-camera footage.

Traveling today … back tomorrow.

A profile by Joseph Shapiro on National Public Radio of Dr. Jonathan Shay, a psychiatrist who won a MacArthur fellowship for his work helping veterans with “psychiatric injuries.” Shay’s angle: he talks about the mythological Greek warriors Achilles and Odysseus.

Soldiers and generals alike listen to Dr. Jonathan Shay, of the Department of Veterans Affairs Outpatient Clinic in Boston. They listen especially when he talks about why it’s crucial to soldiers’ mental health to keep them together in the same unit over time, so they truly come to know and rely upon each other. This wasn’t the practice in Vietnam. But it is again, today, thanks in part to Shay.

… “One of the things [veterans] appreciate,” Shay says, “is the sense that they’re part of a long historical context – that they are not personally deficient for having become injured in war.”

Follow the link to hear Shapiro’s report, as well as an audio of Shay discussing the relevance of the Odyssey to today’s returning veterans.

From NPR, the Bergen Record and the Newark Star-Ledger:

The New Jersey Supreme Court has ordered the insurance program for state employees to pay for speech, occupational and behavioral therapies for a child with autism.

The parents had sought funding for Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), which they said had “transformed their son from a boy who was retreating into darkness into a precocious, gregarious kid.” Many insurance companies say they will not cover ABA because they view it as experimental and unproven.

From the NPR story:

[The decision] comes as parents of autistic children across the country are pushing for better coverage of this disorder. But better coverage for some families may mean higher premiums for everyone. That presents a dilemma for insurance companies …

South Carolina and Texas have passed laws this year requiring some insurers to cover autism therapy, and the Pennsylvania House recently passed its own bill. When South Carolina’s governor tried to veto his state’s bill, he said one reason was that it would raise premiums by an estimated $48 a year. That veto was overturned. There’s currently a bill before the New Jersey legislature that would mandate coverage for ABA. A state analysis concluded the bill would raise premium costs by less than 0.5 percent.