Emotion And Somatic Health

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Everyone has some idea about what the terms health and illness mean, but researchers are not rally very clear or precise about these concepts-nor, for that matter, are medical specialists. Two large but overlapping questions dominate debate. The first concern whether health should be regarded as something more than the mere absence of illness. The second concern whether it is more useful to separate or combine the three main components of health,- the physiological, psychological, and social- which also represent three different levels of scientific analysis.The position that health is not merely the absence of ailments but consists of an overall condition of well being has gained widespread support in recent years. The definition adopted by the World Health Organisation in 1946 illustrates this by treating health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, thereby explictly denying that it is just the absence of physical disease or infirmity as well as combining the three components in the definition. A number of recent writters whose outlook toward health is charcterized by the term "holistic medicine" have adopted a parallel position. If as Feist and Brannon have pointed out, one takes seriously that the word health has its origin in the old High German word hale or whole, that in China and ancient Greece health was though of as being in balance with nature, and that a vital organismic task is to maintain a viable internal equilibrium even when it is disrupted by external demands and pathogens, the term holistic makes good sense, implictly combining physiological, pschylogical and social well-being.Antonovsky has argued forcelly that we must study health instead of disease and has offered what he calls a "salutogenic" model of health instead of a "pathogenic" one. Salutogenesis, he writes, is concerned with why people stay healthy, in contrast with pathogenesis, which is concerned with why people get sick. He maintains that people stay healthy in large measure because they develop a wholesome-no pun intended- sense of coherence, which is characterized by a pervasive, enduring feeling of confidence that the world is predictable and that there is a high propability that things will work out as well as can reasonably be expected. Whenever I reread this statement my querulous mind prompts the question, " What are reasonable expectation"?In light of constant war, murder, trachery, disease and death, I am concerned that health not be said to depend on self deception or illusion, because to have a sense of coherence seems to me to suggest that we should avoid recognizing and thinking about how bad things really are for much of the world(Lazarus, 1983). Many of us are offenede by the condition of the world, as I think we should be. Should health be some sort pf private ease and smugness, particularly for affluent educated and well functioning people, about their relatively comfortable lives. Certainly this is not what Antonovsky intended.