Deficiência física e contexto familiar: bem-estar, propósito de vida e experiência emocional, para além do déficit

Abstract

Disability is a functional limitation of physical, mental or sensory nature that significantly restricts the total achievement of one or more of the major activities in everyday life. Discussing this concept brings us back to a long historical path permeated by misunderstanding that discriminated against people with disabilities, generating prejudices driven by the focus of body limitation, without taking into account their real potential. The general objective of this research is to understand the well-being, including the emotional experience and the purpose of life that people with physical disabilities will experience in their family context, beyond the deficit. To obtain the sociodemographic data a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were used with three young people with congenital physical disabilities of both sexes and aged between 18 and 25 years following the qualitative method of exploratory research. Bardin's content analysis was the technique used to interpret the data and establish three thematic axes and the respective categories: Axis I- Experiencing disability (“body with impairment”, “protagonism of people with disabilities”), Axis II - Family as a nucleus affective” (“positive bonds”, “development support”) and Axis IIIRelating well-being and purpose (“recognizing potential”, “subjective conceptions”, “life satisfaction” and “music and sport”). As a result it was noticed that positive family experience contributes to the improvement of the well-being of people with congenital physical disabilities and their respective development, as well as positive emotional experiences and more defined purposes. Our findings point that the quest for a sense of life influences wellbeing as well as the high level of life satisfaction is allied to the frequency of positive emotions and the way in which each person experiences congenital physical disability in their context, especially the family one.