Understanding Health, Illness and Well-being

This essay discusses the definitions of health, wellness and illness and how they are conceptualized in individual and group behavior, with a focus on obesity. It also explores social and cultural beliefs and ideas of health and illness, different models of health, and the controversies and implications of obesity.

Understanding Health, Illness and
Well being

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
BACKGROUND ............................................................................................................................3
Concept of health and illness in Individual and group behaviours.............................................3
Social and cultural beliefs and ideas of health and illness..........................................................4
Models of health..........................................................................................................................4
Controversies and implications ..................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Health is defined as a status of being stable within body, spirit and mind, it majorly
concerns the freedom from any kind of disorders or physical pain. Wellness on the other hand is
the state of living a healthy as well as safe lifestyle. While illness refers to a poor and degraded
state of body, cognition and spirit, it generally deals with the impression of being sick and unfit
(Raphael and et.al., 2019). The essay will discuss the definitions of health, wellness and illness
and also how these are being conceptualised in individual and group behaviour relating with
obesity. Various view of health and illness due to social and cultural beliefs will also be
focussed. The essay will further elaborate the health models and possible implications of obesity
on different perspectives.
BACKGROUND
Obesity is being considered as an complex and common disease which basically involve
in accumulation of excess fat that further have an adverse and negative effect on the health of an
individual. Obesity is being commonly measured by the Body Mass Index (BMI) which may be
further monitored by waist to hip ratio and few risk factors like lack of physical activities and
cardiovascular diseases (Sirois and Molnar, 2016).
Concept of health and illness in Individual and group behaviours
According to World Health Organisation 1948, health is defined as the state of overall
mental, physical as well as social welfare and it not only associates with the absence of disorder
or illness. The state of such aspects have positive as well as negative effects on the behaviour of
individual or whole group. When an individual is fit mentally, socially and physically they are
considered as an asset to the society and they have an positive behaviour towards everyone. They
work joyfully and engage themselves in every task and accomplish such aims with their healthy
contribution.
When a person is ill, they are tend to become lethargic and liable. Such case result in
frustration, mislead perception and poor judgement which further have an negative impact in
their life. The people who are suffering from obesity usually become stressed and depressed with
their life due to constant teasing of society on their weight (McMillan, 2019). Due to such harsh
behaviour and perception of society towards an obese person, they indulge themselves into rough

physical exercise and some people end up eating more to overcome the stress. Such practice
collectively influence the behaviour of person negatively.
Social and cultural beliefs and ideas of health and illness
The social and cultural beliefs have a great impact of the well being as well as health of
an individual. Illness has been considered as an personal, cultural and social influences due to the
current disease and impairment. Some countries does not pay more attention to the women due to
gender discrimination and due to this mortality of women are more because of pre and post
labour complications, infections and haemorrhages.
The social factors like literacy rate and education have a great effect on the outcomes of
health. People who have same cultural framework tends to work more likely together than the
one who are of different culture. Thus, if a person is unhealthy but belong to same cultural group
then they are exempted from the work load but if an individual belong to different group they
may not be excused (Haworth and et.al., 2017). Obese people may also be affected culturally this
way, they may be considered liable to the family members. Such obese people are socially
unaccepted due to their heavy weight and over size structure.
Models of health
The models of health basically focus on welfare, self realization and self consummation.
The Health Belief Model which has been developed to study and foretell the health associated
behaviour especially in respect of taking some particular health and social care services. Such
model focus on motivating the individuals to consider positive health related actions. This model
is based on adapting such understanding related to health where if a person feel any negative
health state like obesity, they should have a desire to neglect the negative effect of health issue as
a key motivation like to already engage in physical activities and to rely on balanced diet (Sirois
and Molnar, 2016). Another model of health is Adaptation Model, this model states that every
individuals health is an adaptation to outer physical as well social world, which directly
influences where does an individual live. According to this model, the condition of health
whether it deals with physical, mental or social well being is an inescapable dimension of the
individual's life.

Controversies and implications
The controversies which raised due to obesity was that the people who have high weight
tends to live more than normal person and the obesity have lower mortality risk when compared
to non obese individuals. Though, it has been observed that no such evidence is their which
clearly relates the relationship between the weight of a person and mortality risk.
Different interpretations of humans regarding the obesity is dynamic and this perception
may influences the behaviour of the people as well as the society (Glasby, 2017). Some people
purely believes that eating healthy can lower the risk of getting overweight while some people
lays emphasis on exercising and engaging in more physical activities rather than only relying on
healthy diet. The individuals who are suffering from obesity should manage their weight as soon
as possible to prevent themselves from getting deadly diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes,
cardiovascular disorders, high cholesterol and so on. They should use stairs instead of elevators
and must walk or jog to lower the deposition of fat and to live healthy and good quality of life.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it can be concluded that, health, wellness and illness are different
terms. Health is being defined as a status of being stable while Wellness is the state of living a
healthy life and on the other hand illness refers to a miserable and poor state of body. The health
of an individual greatly influences their behaviour and the thinking and perception of people over
obesity is being impacted due to social and cultural aspect. Health Belief Model and Adaptation
Model have been used to elaborate the concept of health. Suggestions like to eat healthy and do
exercise have been provided to obese people for living confident life.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Glasby, J., 2017. Understanding health and social care. Policy Press.
Haworth, C.M., and et.al., 2017. Understanding the genetic and environmental specificity and
overlap between well‐being and internalizing symptoms in adolescence. Developmental
science. 20(2). p.e12376.
McMillan, F.D. ed., 2019. Mental health and well-being in animals. CABI.
Raphael, D., and et.al., 2019. Staying alive: Critical perspectives on health, illness, and health
care. Canadian Scholars.
Sirois, F.M. and Molnar, D.S. Eds., 2016. Perfectionism, health, and well-being. Cham: Springer
International Publishing.
Sirois, F.M. and Molnar, D.S., 2016. Conceptualizations of perfectionism, health, and well-
being: An introductory overview. In Perfectionism, health, and well-being. (pp. 1-21).
Springer, Cham.