Self-Responsibility of People with Chronic Diseases and Disabilities

Responsibility can be considered as the obligation to respond. A person is attributed responsibility by another person or group of persons. The question is what chronically diseased and disabled people can be attributed responsibility for? Since responsibility also requires freedom of action, self-responsibility is always related to the question of whether a patient is capable of accepting self-responsibility and, if so, whether a patient is empowered and given the opportunity to do so. In health-care policy the notion of self-responsibility is often used purposefully to trench on patients' legal positions. That is why self-help organisations would be wise to intensively deal with the notion of self-responsibility.