Exploration of undergraduate occupational therapy students’ perspectives on disability: A qualitative retrospective analysis of reflective narratives

Introduction: The conceptualisation of disability by occupational therapy students directly shapes future clinical practice, capacity for empathy, and effectiveness as a professional advocate. Despite growing international interest in health professional students’ disability attitudes, qualitative data from the unique Indian sociocultural context—characterised by karma-based disability attributions, family-centred care models, and multilingual institutional barriers—remain critically scarce. Method: An observational retrospective qualitative design, underpinned by social constructionist epistemology, was employed. Thirty anonymous handwritten reflective narratives collected during World Disability Day (December 2025) at a tertiary teaching hospital in Mumbai, India, were transcribed verbatim, de-identified, and analysed using Braun and Clarke’s.six-phase reflexive thematic analysis. Total enumeration of all valid responses was employed. Findings: Six themes and 10 subthemes emerged: (1) Disability as Human Diversity; (2) Dual Model Discourse; (3) Societal Attitudes and the Empathy-Pity Dialectic; (4) Advocacy for Systemic Change and Inclusion; (5) Emerging Professional Identity and the Occupational Therapy Role; and (6) Resilience and Strength-Based Perspectives. A predominantly social model-aligned orientation was identified. Culturally specific phenomena—including the ‘bichara’ (pity-charity) mindset and language barriers as institutional disability—were uniquely evidenced. Conclusion: Undergraduate occupational therapy students demonstrate encouraging social model-aligned values; however, gaps in mental health disability literacy, equity advocacy, and professional identity integration require targeted curricular and mentorship intervention. Findings have direct implications for values-based occupational therapy education in India and internationally.