Health is defined as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well being; and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." This definition is given by the World Health Organization.It looks like a beautiful and self explanatory definition. But in practice this is not a very useful definition. It may be the definition of Ideal Health. But many of us - so called healthy(as per the latter half of the definition - absence of disease) fulfill this ideal criteria.
When it comes to mental health, things become a bit more complex. Is a smoker or a heavy user of alcohol mentally healthy ? Or a person continuing to eat excessively despite having diabetes, high cholesterol ? Or a rash driver ? one who refuses to wear seat belts or helmets (2 wheeler riders). This why I said defining health is a complex process.
Generally we assume that anybody who is not under medical care is healthy. For practical considerations this is enough.
ഇന്ത്യ
2 weeks ago
2 comments:
If we consider all people who are not under/recieveing medical care as healthy,most of the poor people in the world have to be considered as healthy..which is an obviosly wrong statement.
And rich people who recieve best medical care will be considered as unhealthy!
In most of the countries health is a commodity which has to be purchased and not accessible to many.
People already has such a notion that our old generation was more healthy and lived long as they had not recieved modern medical care !
I do not think the English word HEALTH is a good medical term or scientific term .To be a good scientific term it should be measurable and the term health do not satisfy that criteria.It is more in the catogory of literary words like happyness,smartness,success,cleverness etc where it varies depending on the person who make the judgement.Orelse it has unacceptable level of subjective element making it difficult to measure and this problem is more in the realm of mental health.So I feel wise people should refrain from defining or using such terms as the task is going to be difficult and sometime futile.
I agree with the view that health is not a very scientific term. It may not be acceptable to precise quantification. Likewise there is a huge element of subjectivity in the judgement about one's state of health / ill health. One can declare that one is healthy despite having serious medical illness. Conversely a healthy man can persistantly complain of il health.
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