The excerpt below is from our webinar “Supporting the Duchenne Family” with guest speaker Dr. Molly Colvin. Dr. Colvin is Director of Massachusetts General Hospital’s Learning and Emotional Assessment Program (LEAP) and Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School. Click here to listen to the full episode.
Dr. Colvin: It’s very different. And I think, you know, broadly that sometimes the way what I’ve sort of learned in talking with people from around the world is that there’s different cultures, differing in terms of their openness and acceptance around disability generally. Right.
And while we struggle a lot on, say, the health insurance front. And America in general, I think is probably more open and inclusive to sort of talking about diversity and neurodiversity and, you know, further along and sort of thinking and having it even legislated around sort of disability access and awareness and everybody being able to sort of have openness.
So when we talk about our public schools and we have federal legislation that sort of means that every child has a right to a free and appropriate public education. And that’s regardless of disability or illness and accommodations need to be made both for the physical and medical needs, but also for the learning.
Around the World
That doesn’t exist in every country around the world, and so I think to you know, when you sort of talk about, you know, families that sort of may come from different places in the world, they’re also may sort of be greater shame and less willingness to sort of talk about kind of. These issues that we’re talking about today, I think Americans generally are more open about sort of talking about these issues.
So there may be sort of different stigma and I think sometimes you kind of run into this even with strangers and that they sort of have a different view where frankly it’s sort of, you know, limited perspective on on these issues and and that can make it hard to sort of even within a family where you’ve got people. Different backgrounds and different beliefs and and sort of meeting people where they are and trying to kind of move them along so that they’re open and inclusive around these things too. But it can be really hard.
US Progress
I think this is an area you know, I was talking a little while ago about how comparatively speaking, the US is probably more open around sort of disability culture and yet I think we have such a long way to go around this.
I feel a little bit of hope. I’m sort of going to end on since we’re coming to the annual end, I’m sort of a hopeful piece. I feel a little bit of hope when I meet with other kids and meet with teenagers these days. I think they are so much more open and accepting and. You know, not as hung up on how people look or how they present or you know that they are willing to sort of engage with kids who are different from themselves and not so worry about labels even. I mean, I’ve learned so much from the kids under. The current kids under 18. That I have some hope around this getting better and I think it’s an incredible challenge.
