To understand approaches to ill health, we must understand what health is in the definition. Health is a complex state that results from the body's continual adjustment and adaptation in response to stresses and changes in the environment in order to preserve homeostasis or internal balance. Health is affected by our age, gender, culture, and social status, and can mean different things to different people. There is no widely agreed-upon concept of well-being. Health is important because it is desired and has implications for encouraging health.
Health, according to the World Health Organization, is a condition of full physical, emotional, and social well-being, not simply the absence of disease or infirmity.' Since health encompasses the best physical, emotional, and social well-being, this has evolved over time. It has to do with an individual's well-being, which entails working to improve one's physical, intellectual, mental, social, and spiritual health to the best of one's capacity. As you can see, the concept of health has evolved significantly over time.
Save your time!
We can take care of your essay
- Proper editing and formatting
- Free revision, title page, and bibliography
- Flexible prices and money-back guarantee
Description in the affirmative:
The achievement and preservation of physical fitness and mental well-being are the optimistic definitions of health. This connects it to people's physical and mental health.
Description in the negative:
The absence of physical illness, disease, or mental distress is defined as the negative concept of health.
There is a third category which is holistic. Holistic wellness refers to taking care of the entire person, including physical, emotional, moral, and social requirements. It's based on the idea that all of these factors influence your overall well-being, and that being sick in one area impacts you in other ways.
Sociological and Biomedical models of health
There are two concepts of health and ill health the sociological model and the bio-medical model. The biomedical health model is based on scientific principles and the absence of disease is the subject of this model. The goal of health care is to cure disease, medical practitioners can use scientific methods to identify illnesses. This is a micro approach that is positivistic and scientific. Individuals are considered dysfunctional in the biomedical method if they are unable to make their usual contribution to society due to a 'sick role.' This is closely related to the Marxist conflict model due to familiarities such as societal inequalities. Health, according to the biomedical model, is described as the absence of pain, disease, or defect. The model focuses on physical mechanisms that affect individuals, such as the physiology and anatomy of disease; however, it ignores social and psychological factors that can play a role in influencing illness. According to the biomedical model, every disease has a cause, and once the cause is removed by Health Care practitioners, the person may regain their health.
The model is focused on empirical study and experience, and it focuses on disease and illness remedies. The biomedical model also notes that different procedures, such as surgery, medications, or therapy, may be used to restore health. The model emphasizes biomedical information and research, as well as the fact that disease can be diagnosed using signs and symptoms. Where it succeeds, it leaves out psychosocial causes, which have been proven to be the primary determinants of disease and illness. Individuals have little or no role in the intervention to return their bodies to health, and the model ignores the perception of an individual's health. When it comes to restoring good health, the biomedical model approaches the body and mind differently, and believes that seeking a cure is more important than preventing disease which is what flaws this model.
In conjunction with this, the sociological concept for this focuses on the social factors that influence an individual's health and well-being. Poor housing, inadequate socialization, and schooling, primary and secondary socialization, poor diet, lack of knowledge of health needs, material disadvantage, cultural inequality in norms and values, the disparity in opportunities, pollution, and the cycle of deprivation are all sociological factors on ill health. People are encouraged to live healthier lifestyles by the socio-medical model. The model examines the causes of illness and disease, attempting to change the factors that cause illness and prevent a recurrence. Many medical professionals make use of it.
It ignores the biological causes of disease and illness, and it may take a long time to find factors influencing the illness and prevention to prevent it from reoccurring by improving environmental factors. The socio-medical paradigm lacks a consistent mechanism for identifying or classifying health issues, and it is unable to describe diseases for which there are no signs or symptoms to diagnose. Changing an individual's atmosphere and lifestyle preferences can entail different things depending on what the person was used to previously; certain people take longer to adapt to change than others; as a result, it can take a long time and not have an immediate answer on the part of the individual.
Marxists conclude that the bourgeoisie determines what constitutes good and bad health. Doctors, according to Marxists, only represent the interests of the bourgeoisie because they are gatekeepers who collaborate with the capitalist class. They leave it up to you to decide whether you are safe or unhealthy. Professionals in the medical field ensure that patients return to work as soon as possible. The government does not spend enough money on health-related issues such as poverty, unemployment, and substandard housing. According to Marxist ideology, health and ill health must be seen as a social class problem related to injustice there would be no ill health if people had a decent standard of life. The upper-class population has a longer life expectancy and improved health whereas the middle and lower class, do not so much. The manifesto policy for this issue causing ill health could be to increase the minimum wage and have more support for the vulnerable who cannot provide for themselves in that period of time.
Health is a crucial part of the culture for Functionalists. If everyone is sick, society would be unable to work, resulting in chaos and the fall of the state. Those that are ill, according to Functionalists, are defying social norms. They see those who are sick as having an important social role to play, which they must play the sick role,' which entails doing everything possible to improve their health in a short period of time, such as going to the doctor, staying at home, and taking medicine. One of the rights associated with this method was the freedom from a social act, such as going to work or college or paying taxes; another right was to be cared for. This, according to Parsons, was a primary feature of a family that cared for sick and dependent family members. The individual's obligations under this strategy included taking appropriate steps to change in order to resume their usual position in society as soon as possible. In addition, liaising with other healthcare professionals, such as physicians and nurses.
The interactionist perspective on health and illness focuses on what happens in a person's life. It is a nervous approach, in that it is concerned with people's physical well-being and focuses on health and sickness concerns. They are concerned about why certain people with serious illnesses do not consider themselves to be sick, for example, a cancer patient may want to run a marathon to raise funds for cancer research, while another cancer patient may choose to be hospitalized. Interactionists are worried that labeling someone as sick would have a negative impact on their self-esteem, and self-image, as well as their families and social lives. Interactionists concentrate on complex relationships with other people, such as their families, friends, and interactions with professional services, rather than systems and organizations when studying sociology. Interactionists believe that social relationships have as much impact as a medical diagnosis in determining whether or not an individual considers themselves to be ill.
Stuck on your essay?
