Physical disability, rehabilitation, and health promotion: a case study in Brazil

Abstract

Reflecting on the health promotion for people with physical impairments implies considering the specificities and meanings attributed to the life experience of each subject throughout their careers. As such, this study was designed to investigate the experience of a man with an acquired physical disability after an accident that damaged his spine. This injury caused a permanent inability to move his legs. It is a case study that used the life history technique to capture its experience. The participant was born in a rural context, and since he was a child, he had to work to help his family. At the age of 16, he started working as a chainsaw operator, and at 24, a tree fell on his back, breaking his spine and leaving him without the movements and sensitivities of his legs. The trauma experienced by the participant caused profound changes in his life. The results demonstrated that the participant’s experience does not align with the traditional experiences found in the literature in general, as the concept of biographical rupture. Sport was a vital collaboration mechanism in the rehabilitation process. Concerning health and illness, there are many spaces in the subject’s experience that collaborate to expand the compression on health promotion paths. The need to depathologize the gaze on the subject’s conditions is highlighted so that the understanding of health promotion processes can be amplified or reconsidered.