Subjectivity and Identity vs Sense of Meaning and Quality of Life of Young People with Disabilities

Abstract

Contemporary youth with disabilities, despite awareness of their own rights and needs, still face many barriers and limitations. Dilemmas arising from adulthood and disability itself in young people with disabilities raise many questions about the sense or nonsense of one’s existence, about subjectivity or personal objectivity, but also about events, situations and needs. Young people with disabilities also put questions about their own identity and quality of life in the situation of entering into adulthood with the problem of disability. In the interdisciplinary approach to this issue, the concept of a human being a subject confirming the justification of the subject as a person who fulfils personal tasks, is full of individualism and striving for self-fulfilment may be the basis form justifying the paradigm of changes in young people with disabilities. It can be attempt to formulate one’s own, personal identity. Young people with disabilities do not differ from their peers in terms of their ambitions and life goals, but in the situation of young people with disabilities it is difficult to enter adulthood. Research already carried out confirms that young people with disabilities still have problems in understanding their own identity. The results of the research confirm a low sense of social belonging and integration of young people with mild intellectual disabilities, a fairly low level of sense of quality of their own, lives, and little awareness of their independence and decision-making possibilities.