Health & Wellness
medical definitions
Define Health
When philosophers try to define health some of them reach a similar conclusion.
R S Downie for example, agrees that the World Health Organisation definition of health—
as “a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing,
and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”—is overambitious.
Nevertheless, he argues, it is probably aiming in the right direction.11 To try to
define health as simply the absence of disease or infirmity leads you into difficulties:
ill health can't be defined simply in terms of disease, for example,
because people can have a disease (especially one with minor symptoms) without feeling ill,
and they can have unwanted symptoms (nausea, faintness, headaches and so on)
when no disease or disorder seems to be present. Nor is the fact that a condition is
unwanted enough to describe it as ill health: it may be the normal infirmity of old age for example;
and again a condition's abnormality is not enough either—a disability or deformity may be abnormal,
but the person who has it may not be unhealthy; and much the same may apply to someone
who has had an injury. To say whether or not physical ill health is present therefore,
a complex combination of “abnormal, unwanted or incapacitating states of a biological system
may have to be taken into account”. And things are even more complicated when assessing
mental ill health. Abnormal states of mind may reflect minority, immoral or illegal desires
which are not sick desires. On the other hand, a psychopath, for example,
may neither regard his state as unwanted, nor experience it as incapacitating.
The problem, however, is not just that ill health can be difficult to pin down.
It is also that we normally think of health as having a positive as well as a negative dimension.
But here again things are complicated. A positive feeling of wellbeing, for example, may not be enough.
Define disease
“Disease … is a pathological process, most often physical as in throat infection,
or cancer of the bronchus, sometimes undetermined in origin, as in schizophrenia.
The quality which identifies disease is some deviation from a biological norm.
There is an objectivity about disease which doctors are able to see, touch, measure, smell.
Diseases are valued as the central facts in the medical view...
Define illness
a disease or period of sickness affecting the body or mind
“Illness … is a feeling, an experience of unhealth which is entirely personal,
interior to the person of the patient. Often it accompanies disease,
but the disease may be undeclared, as in the early stages of cancer or tuberculosis or diabetes.
Sometimes illness exists where no disease can be found.
Traditional medical education has made the deafening silence of illness-in-the-absence-of-disease unbearable to the clinician. The patient can offer the doctor nothing to satisfy his senses…
Define sickness
“Sickness … is the external and public mode of unhealth.
Sickness is a social role, a status, a negotiated position in the world,
a bargain struck between the person henceforward called ‘sick’, and a society
which is prepared to recognise and sustain him.
The security of this role depends on a number of factors,
not least the possession of that much treasured gift, the disease.
Sickness based on illness alone is a most uncertain status.
But even the possession of disease does not guarantee equity in sickness.
Those with a chronic disease are much less secure than those with an acute one;
those with a psychiatric disease than those with a surgical one … .
Best is an acute physical disease in a young man quickly determined by recovery or death—
either will do, both are equally regarded.”
Define Wellness
"The wellness model emphasizes self-healing, the promotion of health,
and the prevention of illness rather than solely the treatment of symptoms of disease...
Every choice we make potentially affects health and wellness.
Sometimes the social and physical environments present obstacles to making healthful choices.
For example, a person may know not to eat fatty, fast food every day,
but this kind of food may be easier to obtain than healthier alternatives.
Wellness includes recognizing that some social influences are not healthy
and finding healthier alternatives. it also includes taking actions to make the social and physical environments healthier for all."
Two models to measure
state of being
medical vs Wellness
The Medical Model of Health relies almost exclusively on biological explanations
of disease and illness and is interpreted in terms if malfunction of organs, cells,
and other biological systems. the absence of health is determined
by the presence of observable or measurable symptoms. in times of sickness
the restoration of health is accomplished by successfully treating the underlying cause of the disease.
if that is not possible, then the goal is to alleviate symptoms. The medical model
tends not to deal with social factors that affect health and only with difficulty integrates
mental and behavioral issues that do not derive from diseased organs,
It rarely considers psychological and social factors in the cause,
diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of iLlness and disease,
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The Wellness model of health includes mental Well-being and social well-being
as part of what contributes to the overall quality (Healthy vs unhealthy) of an individual's life.
Every Aspect of life affects overall health. Influences like; climate, food, shelter, air, water, companions and enemies change the quality of life.
Health is a process of creating and destroying multiple systems in order to grow, learn, master, and love.
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"The medical model advocates relieving a headache by taking aspirin or some other drug
that can alter the physiological mechanisms that produce the pain.
in contrast, the wellness approach advocates determining the source of the tensions -
worry, anger, or frustration - and then attempting to reduce or eliminate it."
Aspects of wellness
This analysis suggests that a comprehensive approach to the promotion of wellness requires active pursuit of complex and divergent strategies. Four concepts, each with a promising, established research base, that hold potential for advancing a richer psychology of wellness are identified. These concepts are competence, resilience, social system modification, and empowerment.
history of Health
public responsibility
During the past 150 years, two factors have shaped the modern public health system: first, the growth of scientific knowledge about sources and means of controlling disease; second, the growth of public acceptance of disease control as both a possibility and a public responsibility...
The history of the public health system is a history of bringing knowledge and values together in the public arena to shape an approach to health problems.
Health & Wellness
Philosophies
Philosophy of health?
The notorious
as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” has been roundly, and justifiably, criticized by philosophers more or less since it first appeared in 1948. Despite its obvious conceptual, and practical, limitations, it launched a highly productive debate about the nature of health in which two major strategies have dominated: a descriptive or naturalistic approach in which health is operationally defined in terms of normal functioning understood entirely in the language of the biological sciences and a normative approach which insists that health cannot be understood until the salient fact that health is a human good is explained. This debate has revealed a dilemma: any philosophically acceptable definition of health must make a place for our powerful intuitions that health is both intrinsically and instrumentally valuable. Yet, unless the notion is firmly grounded in the biological sciences and susceptible to operationalization, it threatens to lose its scientific legitimacy. WHO has more recently and with far less fanfare, developed another definition of health “for measurement purposes” that recognizes the force of the dilemma and attempts, with debatable success, to address it.
Spirituality of health care
The discourse of
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exhibits a number of features that are not always present in the academic literature...
Two distinctions between ‘spirituality’ and ‘religion’ are adopted: inner/outer and broad/narrow, respectively. One interesting consequence of this demographic split is that the evidence for positive health outcomes as a result of religion/spirituality may apply only to the USA (and other religious countries), given the extent to which American culture is saturated with religion. Authors who adopt the broad/narrow distinction extend the denotation of ‘spirituality’ – what is to be deemed as an instance of either ‘spiritual need’ and ‘spiritual care’ – as much as possible in order that the universality premise will seem more plausible in a relatively secular society. This amounts to a classification project, an exercise in persuasive definition, in which the relevant ‘deemings’ require no defence, and in which a semantic bridge is constructed between the inflationary and deflationary poles. As a consequence, a discursive space is created and maintained for religious sensibilities in health care. The classification project is, for that reason, a broadly theological one.