Definitions of health and disease. Flashcards
Who are lay?
General public, young, elderly people
How do the general public define health?
The general public say that health is the absence of disease, a sense of well being, vitality, fully functioning, physical fitness, and something you can pay.
How do young people describe health?
Young people describe health as fitness, energy, strength, and beauty.
How do the elderly define health?
Elderly describe health as Wholeness or integrity, Inner strength, Being able to cope, Having medication, Physicians are responsible for the health of their patients.
Why is it difficult to define health?
Health varies with age, sex, culture, career, intellect.
It is also multidisciplinary (Physical, psychological, environmental, spiritual, social, behavioural, absence of disease)
Describe the The Biopsychosocial model of health and disease:
- Takes into consideration the effects of society on individuals such as religious beliefs, primary/secondary relationships, work history, past incidents.
What was Blaxters British Survey?
Blaxter (1990) analysed the definitions of health provided by over 9,000 British adults in the health and lifestyles survey. She classified the responses into nine categories: 1) Health as not-ill: the absence of physical symptoms. 2) Health despite disease. 3) Health as reserve: the presence of personal resources. 4) Health as behaviour: the extent of healthy behaviour. 5) Health as physical fitness. 6) Health as vitality. 7) Health as psycho-social well-being. 8) Health as social relationships. 9) Health as function.
What is the hollistic approach?
Elves and Simnett in 1999 stated that “Health is seen as holistic – seeing the person as a whole rather than breaking it down into individual aspects.
What is the problem with defining disease illness and sickness via the dictionary?
- These definitions are not clear.
Disease, illness, and sickness as defined by the dictionary all mean the same thing, giving no clear definition to what each actually mean, and how to distinguish between the three.
How does Professor Marinker describe disease, illness and sickness?
Marinker describes these as “three modes of unhealth”
How does marinker define dis-ease?
- 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 dis-ease 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
How does marinker define illness?
- 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…”
How does Marinker 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 dis-ease are much less secure than those with an acute one (harder for employer to believe in the individuals “illness”?); those with a psychiatric disease than those with a surgical one (also harder for the employer to believe? Since a psychiatric disease may be harder to measure due to a lack of physical symptoms. Think depression vs cancer.
How can a student heal themselves?
- We all know that you can become healthier by eating well and exercising i.e. by trying to look after your biology
- But you can attempt to look after your psychology by banning negative thoughts when you notice them – try mindfulness
- You can help look after the environment by reducing your plastic use and energy use, wasting less, participating in Go Green Week
- You can change your inanimate environment: A plant or flowers in your room, a poster, a photograph, a tidy up, make it yours, make it a joy
- You can look after your social needs by contacting that long lost friend; taking a risk and saying hello to someone
Is health the ability to adapt?
A French physician Georges Canguilhem saw health as the ability to adapt to ones environment. He says that health is not a fixed entity but varies for every individual depending on their circumstances.
Canguilhem also says that health is not defined by the doctor but by the person according to his or her functional needs. The role of the doctor is to aid the individual to adapt to their unique prevailing conditions.
Who was The Biopsychosocial model of health and disease developed by?
Developed by psychiatrist George Engel in 1997
