Model Of Health Analysis

Analysis of Health Views
Teresa Matos
June 23, 2014
STEPHANIE FERNANDEZ
PSYCH/626
Health is an expression representing well-being. Both a sound body as well as a sound mind is needed to constitute good health; it means completeness; something wholesome. Historically and in a variety of societies, notable theorists have underscored the principle that health signifies balance, the equivalent of centered (Antonovsky, 1979). The model of health has also been taken in the context of human parts, for instance, the health of a heart and the health of one’s psychology too. (Ferreira et al., 2001). Broadly, health means an integral view of personal well-being (Goldstein, 2000; Roose et al., 2001). People will refer to this by a means
of ascertaining that an individual is healthy or one is in good health. By inference, the notion of health has generally been ascribed to families, communities and as nations too. (Rubinstein et al., 2000). In essence, health can also be ascribed to groups, meaning that healthy people are a group that posses balance, coherence, and in whom we can have confidence in. The historical perspective on health has also been greatly influenced by cultural values (Gilman, 1995). As demonstration of this, it can be seen that contemporary Western medicine considers the health of an individual or of a body part or person by the application of procedures of technological examinations, investigations and experiments for the establishment of indicators of structure, such as interpretations of medical readings of examination equipment as well as function evaluation, such as organ rates and working ranges. The physician may then establish that an individual is in good health. Still some societies attribute health to the community. If there exist instances of any person being unwell; not in one 's usual health or state of mind, the doctor, medicine man or shaman investigates for social relationships that are having difficulties and the manner in which they could be corrected, for instance, amongst the Yanomamö from Venezuela and Brazil (Chagnon, 1992). For this example, health not only eventually exists beyond the individual and sits within the social structure and the interaction with in the community but also within the person articulated in the course of dreams and illusions concerning spirits and ancestors. Health is replicated through common values and association in the society in a believed existing in harmony or reaction in control of a conflict. The most terrible destiny for individuals in the community of this society is to get shunned; to become banished from the group. If this happens, individuals suffer loss of meaning of integrity and belonging. Health also exists within the environment. In this sense, illness also means an imbalance, certain aspects being out of synchronization. Diverse cultural categories exhibit a wide range of belief systems when speaking of health and healing.
Some of the belief systems also consider different disease models, wellness as well as illness paradigms. This also includes certain culturally specific illnesses and syndromes. From a historical perspective, it can be confidently said that suggests that people initially ascribed the causes of ailments to certain categories; reasons within the person such as negative emotion or character; aspects existing in the natural environment such as pollution; agents related to other people or the social environment; and the supernatural aspects including God, fate, and native beliefs for example witchcraft or omen. Views about health and illnesses have progressively transformed over time through human history to the level where people and society no longer attribute the cause of illness only to the individual or the natural world but majorly ascribes it and explains illness causation and health through the western biomedical model of
medicine. All through history, society progressively developed various theories relating to psychological disturbances. These theories have mainly been categorized in to any one of the three general themes mystical and supernatural, scientific and medical, or humanitarian. The diverse etiological theories and the advancing knowledge have made great impact on the treatment of illnesses specifically psychological disorders and have shaped current theories in clinical psychology. The Greco-Roman civilizations saw an increasing scientific view of health and illness developing. The basis of a systemic method to psychological and physical disorders is known to have started with the early Greek philosophers for example Hippocrates (460 – 377 B.C.) The biomedical model is a conceptual model of illness which rejects psychological and social factors and incorporates only biologic causes in the process of comprehending an individual 's health condition, illness or disorder.
Specifically, the biomedical model hypothesizes that mental disorders are brain illnesses and highlights pharmacological therapy directed at supposed biological anomalies. This biologically oriented system to health has resulted in the application of psychiatric medications and illness-specific drugs. The biomedical model has attracted both the strongest of criticism and support and it is difficult to judge if it has been useful or not, however, the biomedical model has strongly influenced clinical psychology through the embracing of drug trial approach in psychotherapy
research.
The biomedical retrospective nonetheless, encountered hard tests in several ways even in the beginning phases. The development of psychoanalysis at the turn of the 19th century up to its pinnacle period in medicine spanning the years of the 1940s especially in the United States and elsewhere in the world became a great motivation for the development of a number of approaches to medicine that tried to re-incorporate the mind into biomedicine. Further developments of opposition to biomedicine appeared beginning inside medicine. The progress of psychoanalysis and its growing importance from the 1920s to the 1940s also saw the arrival of psychiatry in medical schools. The highlighted divergent developments in the progress of medicine especially in the United States, the establishment of reductionist medicine and the rapidly increasing sphere of alternative and behavioral medicine and psychiatry influenced the background from where the psychosomatic approach medicine begun. The diffusion of psychoanalysis into the biomedical discourse eventually encouraged the beginning of psychosomatic medicine. Psychoanalysis gave both the drive and foundation for the initial psychosomatic efforts to include the mind into biomedicine at the theoretical level. The initial psychosomatic movement appeared during the 1920s. the earliest Freudian psychoanalysts in conjunction with their American counterparts leaded the new approach that wanted to re-integrate the mind into the area of somatic medicine. In 1939, the first psychosomatic journal, Psychosomatic Medicine, was founded. One of the strengths of the biomedical model lies in the fact that it follows a scientific approach. It is possible to measure and control the outcome of treatment until a suitable result is reached. As an example, consider that the dosage of Prozac can be varied until a depressed patient is observed to operate satisfactorily. Another strong feature of the model is that since the patient is regarded to be ill, they are not held liable or are not to be blamed for the behaviour. Consequently, even though stigma in society can still not be completely eliminated, there is a significant amount of reassurance when it is known that certain behaviour can be caused by organic or medical condition which may be rectified through medical treatment. The weakness of traditional biomedical models of illness, however, is that they emphasize the discovery of the pathology more than understanding of the illness. These models also do not give explanation for the functional somatic syndromes and ailments without evident illnesses.
References
Antonovsky, A., (1979). Health,Stress and Coping. San Francisco: Jossey–Bass.
Chagnon, Napoleon A. (1992) Yanomamö: The Last DaysofEden. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Gilman, S., (1995). Health and Illness: Images of Difference. London: Reaktion Press.
Goldstein, M.S. (2000). The Growing Acceptance of Complementary and Alternative Medicine, in Chloe E. Bird, Peter Conrad and Allen M. Fremont (eds), Handbook of Medical Sociology, 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice–Hall. pp.284–97.
Roose, S.P., Glassman, A.H. and Seidman, S.N. (2001) Relationship between Depression and Other Medical Illnesses, Journal of the American Medical Association, 286: 1687–90.
Rubinstein, Robert A., Scrimshaw, Susan C. and Morrisey, Suzanne E. (2000). Classification and Process in Sociomedical Understanding: Towards a Multilevel View of Sociomedical Methodology’, in Gary L. Albrecht, Ray Fitzpatrick and Susan C. Scrimshaw (eds), Handbook of Social Studies in Health and Medicine. London: Sage.pp.36–49.
Vaughn, L. M., Jacquez, F., & Baker, R. C. (2009). Cultural Health Attributions, Beliefs, and Practices: Effects on Healthcare and Medical Education . The Open Medical Education Journal, 2, 64-74.