The positive approach to health is known as the social model of health..The Social model of health realizes that illness can be caused by factors such as housing lifestyle and education. The social model of heath recognizes that there could be more than just one factor and that ill health can be cured by taking time to look at social conditions such as damp which could lead to colds, having carpet in your house if you have asthma can lead to flu and low income which can affect your health too as the amount of income you receive effects your diet, as it can be costly to buy good fruit and vegetables. Income can also limit the exercise you get as it can be costly to join a gym. Social model of health is the complete opposite of biomedical. It is a positive approach to health. It realizes that peoples own lifestyle choses can affect their health and that there are many factors in society can affect their health.
Personal responsibility to health
Personal responsibilities of health is when people feels that looking after their health as a whole is important and in some cases is the priority. These types of people take a positive approach on health and will always watch and take account of what food they are eating and are they eating their five portions of fruit a vegetables a day. They will take regular exercise and will drink plenty of fluids. People, who take the positive approach to health in relation to their personal responsibilities to health, are more likely to overcome serious diseases. They are more likely to think positive and to become more determined and mindset that they can defeat the illness rather than saying “I have a disease I’m going to die” [text book]
There are those people who do take a negative approach to their personal responsibilities to health. These are people who smoke binge drink and take drugs that have not been subscribed to them. These people tend to suffer more often for illness and are more likely to take the negative approach the illness. It is a well-known fact that people who smoke tend to come from a more disadvantaged background than the average person.
“29% of men and 28% of women smoked, but only 2% of professional men and 11% of professional women smoked, compared with 41% of unskilled male workers and 36% of unskilled women workers.”
“The poor are also twice as likely to have drink problems as the rich. Seventeen per cent of poor men and 6% of poor women has an alcohol problem, compared with 8% of rich men and 3% of rich women.”
from these statistics it is clear that factors such as income, housing, lifestyle and education can have an affect on whether people chose to smoke, binge drink and take drugs.
Illness and wellness continuum
Moving from the centre to the left shows a progressively worsening state of health. Moving to the right of centre indicates increasing levels of health and wellbeing. The more you move to the left the nearer you become to premature death.
A person may develop signs of a disease and go to the doctor to receive treatment and the treatment works and gets rid of the signs so the person goes back to normal point. When a person doesn’t get treatment then that person ends up closer to premature death as they approach the stage of symptoms which then could disable the person’s wellness.
The diagram displays the fact that the earlier the signs are treated the better the chance of recovery from the disease.
When we move to the right of the illness-wellness continuum we become closer to the highest level of wellness. To achieve this, a person must have awareness. This includes social, physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual aspects of health. To move further towards you must experience education and health to reach the highest level of wellness. Physical health is the overall condition of a living organism at a given time, the soundness of the body, freedom from disease or abnormality, and the condition of optimal well-being. People want to function as designed, but environmental forces can attack the body or the person may have genetic malfunctions. The main concern in health is preventing injury and healing damage caused by injuries and biological attacks.”
To have good physical health means to have no aches and pains. It is getting the right sleep that is require which is at least eight hours a night, having a balance diet, taking part in regular exercise, having awareness of safety such as not taking risks when driving or crossing the road and being able to manage you stress levels. All these factor affect your physical health due to the fact that if you fail to carry out one of these factors your physical health will not be up to its normal standards an therefore makes it easier for illness to come upon you. Physical health can also be effect by Emotional and social health, if you are stressed or depressed your physical health can become effect as you may not be able to look after your balanced diet you may not want to exercise and may not have enough time to get eight hours of sleep a night. Emotional and social health are linked closely together is link together. Emotional health consists of being able to express your emotions whether they are negative or positive it is being able to enjoy a laugh and being able to relate to others and having a good self-esteem. If you lack in any factors of emotional health you it can end up affecting your social health. For example if you have a low self-esteem you are more likely to find it harder to interact with friends and other people outside the family circle and this can affect your physical health causing depression. Your physical, emotional and social health can all be affected by you intellectual health. Typically people think of intellectual health as academic knowledge, but in fact, it also entails creativity, general knowledge, and common sense. Our thoughts are influenced by each of these factors, which in turn influence our decisions. It’s not only our IQ that matters when it comes to decision making, often times our general knowledge and common sense are more important.
This is about having manners and having curiosity. Education plays a big role in intellectual health seeing that education can help to keep people intellectually stimulated and when awareness and education are brought together the person is on their way to high levels of wellness. So therefore if you have a high level of intellectual health you are more likely to have a better state of physical emotion and social health as you understand what each health involves and how you look after it.