A negative concept of health concentrates on the absence of disease or illness. It suggests that you can only be regarded as being healthy if you have no disease or illness.
Positive concepts view health as a state of well-being as an individual might feel well even if they have a disease. When asked how they feel they might express that they 'feel great today' even if they are suffering from a serious illness.
Care professionals usually adopt a holistic approach to care and support, as they see their role is to address the needs of a person rather than just identified problems. Like a person with difficult needs such as a young mother with sclerosis may be cared by a variety of professionals. These would include a community nurse, a GP, a social worker etc, which is often referred to as a multi-disciplinary team as they each have their own particular roles and responsibilities for her care and support. A holistic assessment will need to be carried out which includes 6 health’s which are:
Intellectual health
Spiritual health
Social health
Emotional health
Mental health
Physical health
Mildred Baxter did a study which was Health and Lifestyles in 1990 and interviewed almost about 10,000 people. In this study she identified three pieces to people's understanding of health and well-being which were: a positive definition , regarding health as feeling well and fit a negative definition, regarding health as being free from pain or discomfort a functional definition , regarding health in terms of being able to perform often day to day tasks
Sociologists often use information about death rates, incidence of serious diseases and suicide statistics, which is often analysed by social class, ethnicity, gender, etc. as this type of information can be generally