HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Is Disability The New Normal? On some elite US campuses, as many as one in four students are classified as ‘disabled’.

In recent times, the tendency to medicalise human experience has encouraged a growing number of young people to interpret their lives through the narrative of mental health. When a student’s ups and downs are interpreted through medical language, then experiences like disappointment, pressure and stress come to be seen as pathological. Feelings and emotions that were once considered normal seem more threatening in our medicalised culture.

Young people who have been educated and socialised to understand their experiences through the prism of mental health easily develop a disposition to interpret every problem they face through a medical diagnosis. In such circumstances, they quite naturally believe that they are entitled to some form of medical support and special treatment. Moreover, once disability is depicted as the new normal, many will embrace it as an identity.

The institutionalisation of disability does no favours to young people. It diminishes their capacity for independence. It also does no favours to those who suffer from serious disabilities. The normalisation of disability trivialises these conditions and channels resources away from those who really need them.

It does allow people whose parents can afford a compliant doctor to get a leg up in the rat race.