A Primer To Medicine: The Complex Definitions Of Health And Wellness

What is health? Doesn’t everyone know? And even though wellness sounds slightly muddier, isn’t it clear, too? No, it isn’t obvious at all unless you are familiar with concepts from a holistic approach to life itself. The definitions are surprisingly precise and loaded with meaning, so let’s spend some time with them. This post is the first in my blog series A Primer To Medicine.

Health Defined

The World Health Organisation defines health the same way it has done since 1948:

“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

First surprise to me is that care is taken to relate health this clearly to unhealth.

Second is that a stuffy old organisation, as slow as a tanker ship to change course, is inclusive enough to add “mental” and “social” to the mix. Kudos.

Third is the word “complete”. We will return to it in a moment, but I find this measurement particularly interesting when considering the addition of mental and social. Complete leaves no room for interpretation. Either it is health or it is not.

Fourth, and perhaps as shocking as a paradigm-shifting bomb, the year itself, 1948: right after the Second World War, when people were broken in both body and mind.

Today, despite the internet, thousands of research papers published yearly, information overload, and empowered patients, it is still difficult to find healthcare people capable of viewing human beings this holistically.

Health has had a well-rounded definition for over 70 years now, but it is as if it hasn’t quite sunk in yet, and all I can do is ask myself why? This definition of health by WHO should be a sentence anyone with a degree in healthcare can cite from memory upon request.

Wellness Defined

Wellness may sound vague, like something happening in beauty parlours and spas to improve mainly external bodily features, but today it is talked about in no uncertain terms.

National Wellness Institute (NWI) in the USA includes the six following components in their view on wellness:

1. Emotional
2. Occupational
3. Physical
4. Social
5. Intellectual
6. Spiritual

This interdependent model was developed by Dr. Bill Hettler, co-founder of the institute. The exact definition by the NWI of wellness is:

“Wellness is an active process through which people become aware of, and make choices toward, a more successful existence.”

Note the emphasis on conscious choice and lifestyle. Read more here.

Grand Rapids Community College (GRCC) takes it a step further on a page by Human Resources, intended for staff, by adding the environment to the list:

1. Physical dimension
2. Emotional dimension
3. Intellectual dimension
4. Social dimension
5. Spiritual dimension
6. Environmental dimension
7. Occupational dimension

You can read more on the GRCC website for a large number of practical tips on how to view the different wellness dimensions. You will also get an idea of the implications in policy-making around the globe, and how far we all must go still in order to create equal societies, where there is an actual chance for everyone to reach health and wellness.

Why these random sources and not some heavy-weight organisation? Because the latter tend to steer clear of preventive medicine still. “Medicine” is mainly the treatment of bodily ailments, with anything psychiatric and psychological getting tiny leftovers of funding.

Health And Wellness Compared

How do health and wellness fit together?

Health describes the current state of a person: do they have complete health physically, mentally and socially in this moment or not? Either one has it or not.

Wellness insinuates fluctuation, a dynamic development of a person reacting on and responding to changes, both internally and externally. The success of adaptation and personal growth also seems to be dependant on support systems in the society at large.

Some questions to ask:

• What skills are we teaching children?
• How do we apply altruism in our societies, or how individualistic do we encourage citizens to be?
• What does it take to become a mature adult not just in years, but attitudes as well?
• What characteristics do we wish to flourish on this planet as a whole?

Regardless of the wishes of our communities, made clear through politics, we as separate entities, individuals, have the power to change course in this very moment if we so desire.

Change is often gradual rather than noticeably incremental, and going with the seven dimensions presented by GRCC we have a multitude of areas of life we can improve our everyday lives within. Perhaps occupation in this moment isn’t anything we can change, but spiritual or emotional is?

Quality of life is among the most subjective concepts, but the dimensions of wellness in particular are not. It is up to us to identify where we feel good and where there is room for improvement still.

Wrapping Up

The boomer generation is full of people, who have never seen the inside of a psychologist’s office, but who scoff at therapy and think it is for the elusive “other people”.

There is a meme circulating in social media about therapy and how people, who are seeing a therapist regularly, are there because the person(s) being the reason for it are not in therapy. Generational trauma for example is a concept that many post-war people are unfortunately incapable of defining still, and so inherited unhealthy behaviour models are passed on.

It will take decades to shift focus from treating symptoms to preventing illness from happening (to the best of one’s abilities). During that time, I fear concepts such as wellness or personal development will keep being considered with not much interest or respect.

It is good to recall that individuals experiencing well-being create healthy societies with fewer crimes and higher productivity. This should sound appealing to all of us.

I invite your constructive thoughts on this in the comments below.

 

For the reader in Finland:

• Health: sv. hälsa, fi. terveys
• Wellness: sv. friskvård, fi. hyvinvointi

This blog post is part of the blog series A Primer To Medicine.

Photo credit: Jean-Philippe Delberghe.