The Emotional and Physical Problems of People with Friedreich’s Ataxia and Their Perception about Discrimination

Living with disabilities might be difficult because of environmental and societal barriers. Societal barriers against people with disabilities generally include discriminative ideas of people with no disabilities. In this study I focus on the experiences of people with specific kind of disability namely Friedreich’s Ataxia (FA). Since it is a progressive disorder, people with FA might experience different kinds of impairments at the same time and they might confront many obstacles from society. To understand their emotional and physical problems one qualitative and one quantitative study were conducted in the current research study. In quantitative part it was found that perceived social support is an important factor for the affect situation of people with FA. In qualitative part it was revealed that people with FA confront both environmental obstacles like the disabling streets for wheelchairs and societal obstacles like discriminative behaviors toward them. In this light in future studies researchers might focus on the ways to reduce discriminative ideas of non-disabled people.