Problems of adolescents with orthopaedic disability in relation to causation of disability

All over the world and in all stages of history, a section of the population is afflicted with disabilities. Disabilities, in spite of the advances made in medical and social sciences persist and the disabled are cut off from one way or another from the mainstream. About 15 per cent of the world’s population have some form of disability and are increasing due to population ageing, chronic health conditions, among other causes. Disabilities means incapacity to perform any activity in the usual manner or within the range considered normal for the human beings. Orthopaedically disabled are those who can not move spontaneously as normal human beings. The needs and problems of the disabled should be viewed as an essential part of overall social development of the country. In the wake of the country’s rapid industrialization and urbanization, many changes are taking place in the social fabric of the society. As a result besides material and economic deprivation, disability causes great psychological strain for an adolescents as this period is known as “storm and stress” with increase dependency on others. There is a growing awareness both in the Government and society about the need to reach out to the disabled people to enable them to become self sufficient and independent. But all these programme and intervention programme can be effective only when one understand their needs and problems. Society which fails to respond affectively to the problems of disabled accepts not only a huge loss of human resources, but a crucial waste of human potential. Keeping this view in mind, an attempt was made to explore the problems of orthopedically disabled adolescents. Hundred adolescents between the age-group of 13–18 were selected from some schools of Coimbatore district. Result highlighted that there is significant differences among the three types of causative factors.