The Person with Disabilities and the Family System

Abstract

This paper discusses issues relating to people with disabilities, since its current conceptualization, the difficulties with which the person will have to live with because of the disability, examining this issue from a theory of crisis to be faced and overcome. Influences exerted on the subsystems and experienced by the individual, the couple/parents and the siblings, and extended family, including also the community as an encompassing system are discussed. The implications of the disability and the difficulties to be faced and, ideally, overcome by the individual, the family and the community are illustrated using a short story by the writer Lya Luft.