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approaches to health

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approaches to health
How society views and defines health is determined by a range of factors and sociological perspectives. There is statistical evidence available about how common illnesses are in the UK.
There are a number of contrasting definitions of health, illness and disease. According to the world health organisation "Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity". For some health may be related to moods and feelings and having an equal balance in physical and mental well-being. Whereas for a young female health may be linked to being beautiful or thin as this is commonly portrayed in magazines and the media. For an elderly person they may feel healthy even with underlying illnesses as they may be able to carry out day to day tasks and feel fine on that particular day
In 1990 Mildred Blaxter conducted a survey where she asked 10,000 people how they defined health, her findings defined three main outcomes negative, positive and functional. Negative which was free from disease, discomfort or pain. Positive which was a feeling of well-being and functional where people defined health as being able to function properly or carry out tasks.
Being able to define health is important as it can help health care professionals deliver a better service and health services can work together towards positive definitions of health.
There are a number of approaches to health one of them being the holistic approach. Ewles and simmet (1999) stated that the holistic approach to health has a number of different factors some of them being physical, intellectual and mental, emotional, social, spiritual and societal. The physical was the most obvious it is the mechanical functioning of the body. The mental was the

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