Talk:Sitting disability

A page called Sitting disability already exists.

Sitting problems is until now an unrecognized disability. It is not mentioned anywhere in the anti-discrimination laws, in any public documents or research. Even it is the most notable disabilities for people with back problems. Because it is not discussed anywhere, it remains as an unknown and invisible disability for many people around the world. It seems like Norway is the only nation acknowledging this disability for people with severe back problems. If the Wikipedia delete this article, sitting disability will remain unknown in the English speaking world. Please tell me what I have to do get the article accepted. I have written a similiar article in Norwegian Wikipedia. Askeladden2006 10:49, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Welcome to Wikipedia. It would help to Wikify the article by creating links to other articles and citing your references. You might also add a == See Also == linking to the Norwegian article. Brian 12:13, 17 June 2006 (UTC)btball

I see very little about this in a Google search and nothing about it in ICD9, ICD10 or SNOMED.

Is it really a recognized disability or disorder? If so, you should cite your references.

Links to any webpages or wikipedia pages that talk about back problems and also mention sitting disabilty would be useful.

One concern I have is that the majority of the (few) Google pages that show up are all within content advertising other products which makes this look like spam ... I won't tag this page as such as your article seems very plausible to me ... it just needs to cite some references (even Norwegian) to help verify that this is legitimate. The fact that I can't find it in any standard (English) medical references makes me wonder about its suitability for an Encylopedia article. But, if it is a recognized disorder, even in just one country that is potentially noteworthy. You could say something to that effect. Something like "Sitting disability, recently recognized in Norway [cite reference] which is currently the only country that recognizes it as a medical disorder, is related to back pain ...etc." I'm making it up a bit to give you an idea as I know nothing about this disabilty.

The best articles cite references, link to external sources and link to other articles (and have other articles which link to them). I hope this is helpful, please don't be discouraged!

Brian 12:25, 17 June 2006 (UTC)btball

Hello, I used to be a Government lawyer in Norway, but am now disabled due to severe back problems. Because of extreme pain, I am unable to sit for more than 5 minutes at a time, and am unable to walk for more than a couple of minutes, meaning that I spend my life laying down.

I have had sitting problems since I gave birth the last time, many years ago. The Internet, however, has made it possible for me to join the world and use my skills again. Some of the work I used to do was to help making a new and better disability and welfare laws in Norway.

You are right, Brian, you will not find much about this in Google. That is just my point. I am both flattered and sad that Norway should be the only nation recognizing this disability. It is quite a common disability over here for people with severe back pain. From my 5 years experience with my international online support group, I can tell it is quite common for people around the world with back problems. As a lawyer working on the Norwegian disability laws for several years, I can assure you it is a real disability and disorder and this is not spam. As I said, sitting problems is one of the most notable disabilities for people with severe back problems. Sitting disability is not a recently recognized disorder in Norway. It is a well known and the most usual problem when having severe back pain. It is just not a whole lot published about it on the Internet yet. It is an overlooked impairment, but that is not because it is not existing or not recognized.

As far as I know, it is only a few Norwegian articles, my own websites with information in both Norwegian and English about sitting disability. I can give you an English website that explains how to make your own tools when you have sitting problems, but I am afraid it looks commercial.

http://www.aglasshalffull.org/computer-setups-for-the-back-lying.html

http://odin.dep.no/filarkiv/274587/cbk-Ryggforeningen_i_Norge.pdf

http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sittehemning

http://www.mosken.com/sitteproblemer.html

http://www.mosken.com/sit.html

My Norwegian website is listed in ODP/Demoz.

I can assure you my websites are not commercial and like my online support group they are all non profit. Actually I pay for having them all up and running.

The reason I didn’t post the links I had, is they are in Norwegian and some of them are my own websites.

Thank you so much for listening to me and helping! My native language is as you might have guessed Norwegian. Althought I have been building websites in English the last 5 years. I am absolutely not discouraged! I was actually shocked when I accidently discovered that sitting disability was not mentioned anywhere on wikepedia! A good friend in the US told me that and suggested for me to write something. Askeladden2006 16:58, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

I am sorry, I noticed now that I said myself it is a unrecognized disability. First of all, I didn't mean it is a new medical disorder. It is unfortunately as old as back problems haS ever excisted. It is an invisible disease and in anti-discrimination law documents, it is very often overlooked or forgotten. I was more thinking of the legal issues, not the medical side. Askeladden2006 17:04, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi, your article is no longer a candidate for speedy deletion and looks like a good Wiki article. Thanks for your patience. I will do what I can to help improve your article, but it is now a good article overall by Wikipedia standards (in my opinion). Brian 21:44, 17 June 2006 (UTC)btball

Just because there are few articles in the English language mentioning sitting disability, it does not mean that the article is an insufficient piece of information. This disability is discussed in many Norwegian documents. I am trying to make the English speaking part of the world aware of this disability as mostly English speaking only mention: reduced mobility and visual or auditory impairments. Askeladden2006 10:29, 9 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Agree - this is a nice article now. Good work. Let me know if there's anything more I can do to help.

Brian 13:47, 9 July 2006 (UTC)btball

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Why don't they just stand? I stand most of the time. Hurts my feet, but so what? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.122.63.142 (talk) 19:48, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

You have a good point there! Some people suffering from sitting disability are able to stand. But sittingdisability is often caused by severe back pain problems. When the spine is unable to keep the body sitting up, a standing position is even harder for the spine to keep up.

This article is however about sitting disability, not about how to adjust to society with different disabilities.--&#123;&#123;subst:Babel-7&#124;en-3&#124;no&#124;nn-2&#124;sv-2&#124;da-2&#124;de-1&#124;fr-1}} (talk) 08:41, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

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PLEASE!! SOMEONE EXPERIENCED EXCERPT PARTS OF THE FOLLOWING AND ADD THEM TO THE ARTICLE citing "One sufferer" as the source:


 * Perhaps the page should start with stating the obvious: Sitting is an essential and expected human ability, whose function is to provide rest when one is not standing or walking. When one cannot do what is essential and expected, it is a disability, whether doctors or other people choose to recognize it. It needs. desperately, to be recognized.

When a person cannot sit, that leaves standing, walking, and lying down. Often people who cannot sit are also limited in walking and standing. As long as the disability goes unrecognized, sufferers are saddled with the additional burden of explaining why they are laying down in a public place.
 * It should be stated that "sitting disability" is a broad term with a multiplicity of underlying causes. The point is, who would forgo sitting if they had a choice?


 * My diagnosis is "Right Neural Foramen Stenosis, secondary to recurrant L3-4 far right lateral disc herniation where Facet Joint Arthropathy and post-surgical scar tissue from the surgery for the first herniation. The diagnosis is so long-winded, I've rarely heard it spoken. It is also rare, so no one is really familiar with it. Much easier to say "failed back surgery syndrome," which offends me especially as "failed back surgery syndrome," is NOT a recognized medical disorder, but a term of convenience for doctors who can't be bothered to look at back pain cases as individual cases.


 * My problem is there is not enough room for my third lumbar nerve root to exit from the right side of my spine. All diagnostic studies have confirmed there is mechanical pressure on the motor nerve that controls my illopsoas muscle complex. No one knows much about the illopsoas muscles, either (but Wikipedia does have an article). This is a direct explanation of my problems with standing and walking. Not being able to sit is much worse.


 * When I sit down, it increases the pressure on the nerve root. Before I was medicated, the pain was comparable to slamming my hand in a car door. I am on dosages of narcotics that are usually reserved for cancer patients. These drugs cause severe side effects. Several times I have fallen asleep on the toilet for just a few minutes and woke up to find I was paralyzed from the waist down on the right side. Before I solved this problem, my sleeping self threw me off the commode and clear to the other side of the room in response to the pain. The solution is to always elevate my feet so I can and lean forward to rest my elbows on my legs, transferring the weight of my upper body off the nerve root and opening up the joint spaces in my spine. Perhaps this page should have a link to "intractible pain." A key feature of my solution to the bathroom problem is that my hands are not free. So to be most explicit, I am unable to sit in a functional position. Oh, how I envy everyone in a wheelchair, especially if they are pain-free. Yes, I would trade my meager walking and standing abilities for the ability to rest without having to lie down in a particular posture. Standing and walking significantly increase my pain by causing acute inflammation, anyway.


 * My pain has a known cause. There is ongoing, acute mechanical compression on a nerve root, but for the ease of the medical community, it is usually classified as "chronic pain." This offends me to no end, because the definition of chronic pain is not only pain lasting more than three months, but that which is unaffected by treatment. The underlying cause of my pain has never been treated, because my disorder is so rare, surgeons in Canada are not routinely trained to do micro-endoscopic surgery, and the normal, very invasive surgery would certainly cause even more scar tissue to form. And, heaven forbid! Almost all the information about my disorder is on commercial sites, for thousands of American doctors are skilled in the technique.
 * This article's focus should be recognition and the pursuit of accessibility. I cannot get my hair done, go for coffee with a friend, or get my eyes examined. We should count how many people suffer from this and divert an appropriate amount of government spending on, first of all, fighting the presumption that everyone can enjoy the ability to sit. As we did for wheelchair users, most public areas could be made accessible to non-sitters with a modicum of effort. For example for every football field of area, there should be at least four seven foot long benches.


 * Anna in Victoria 04:51, 23 May 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Annainvictoria (talk • contribs)

Hi Anna, always lovely to see a new face on wikipedia. It's great that we might have a perspective from someone familiar with the condition. I'm sure the content you've posted above will be very useful, particularly for giving other editors a bit of context when they start working on this article. At the moment, it's going to be a little difficult to use the information directly because of wikipedia's rules about Orginal Research (it's woth reading No_original_research for more details) but, once this material is supported by sources, this might help inform some substantial changes to the article. Thanks Fayedizard (talk) 20:28, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Other websites about sitting disability
This website quotes what people with sitting disability have said on a public forum for people with chronic pain:

Website about people with sitting disability

Facebook has a group for people with sitting disability:

Facebook group

The group is growing every week and has 190 members.

This noncommercial video about sitting disability has been running on Norwegian national TV on holidays the whole 2013. It will continue to run in 2014 to inform people about this special disability:

Video about sitting disability

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Askeladden2006 (talk • contribs) 18:20, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

June 2019
I was about to add a note to a sentence that jumped at me as being an opinion, but thought I'd check the Talk page first. Where I find that the author of the article has been struggling for some time to get it "up to Wiki's standards." It explains why I saw an opinion presented as fact.
 * (It's the last sentence in the Possible Causes section: "This combined with the fact that reduced ability to sit is not mentioned in research or anti-discrimination laws, makes it even harder for people to live with this kind of impairment."
 * Now, I happen to agree with it, as I also have a "hidden disability," but it's still an opinion until it's sourced. (In which case, it might STILL be an opinion, but at least there's a source for it.))

Anyway, I got to this page from another wikipage--Ischial tuberosity--where it's included in the See Also section. I was on that page because I was reading an article on Sports-health.com about Chronic Proximal Hamstring Tendinopathy. I think some of the references for that article might mention disability or even Sitting Disability specifically. There aren't links to the references from the article, although there is a full reference list.

https://www.sports-health.com/sports-injuries/leg-injuries/chronic-high-proximal-hamstring-tendinopathy I think any relevant info and/or additional sources would be in the first 6 references (the rest probably being more 'technical'/of a highly medical aspect).

I also did a very quick search, and found a website about "Living with a Sitting Disability." Yes, there is a tiny bit of "commercial content," which I think is merely the author offering some of her/his personal work-arounds that she/he has come up with. But there's a page of Resources, and one for Articles (which are all articles written by the site's author, I would guess. By which I'm not implying they would have little value in working on this wiki-article). https://www.sittingdisability.com/ Colbey84 (talk) 04:44, 19 June 2019 (UTC)