QUESTION
The Illness-Wellness continuum
ANSWER
Introduction
The Illness-Wellness continuum is a diagram that shows how a person’s health is made up of their mental awareness, emotional health, and whether or not they are sick. Travis proposed this concept in the year 1972. The state of a person’s health can change. Sometimes, he or she may look fine but have certain diseases (Payton, 2017). When you look at the health-illness continuum and how it relates to the human experience, you can see how important adaptation is for keeping your health and well-being. At the moment, health care is more focused on illness and disease than on health and well-being. Every person has their own definition of health based on how they feel, whether or not they have symptoms of an illness, and whether or not they can function and carry out daily duties. A continuum care system can track a patient’s condition over time and determine the level of care required to keep them healthy.
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The health-illness spectrum
A state of well-being or wellness is a moving target and an ongoing process. As a result, decision-making in health-related areas is required daily, affecting the entire individual. The right side of the continuum shows high levels of health, while the left side shows sickness or death before its time. The continuum’s midpoint is a point of no discernible illness or wellness. According to the theory, people move back and forth on the continuum daily (Greenberg, 2015). The treatment paradigm is to the left of the neutral point on the continuum. Traditional healthcare falls short in treating and intervening in illness and disease states. The further left a person moves on the continuum, the more healthcare takes over, and the patient does very little to get better. Traditional medicine can only bring a person back to a state of equilibrium on the wellness spectrum. Once the middle point is reached, it is up to the person to take responsibility and do what they can to improve their health.
Consideration of my overall health
When I think about illness and wellness in terms of my own health, I am fully aware, well-informed, and always learning more about how to stay healthy and fit to avoid getting sick. Ogden (2012) says that my health is helped by a positive outlook, healthy eating habits based on the Mediterranean diet, a low carbohydrate diet because diabetes and heart disease run in my family, and some moderate exercise. Options and resources to help me on my journey to continued wellness come from within the person in me. Personal human experience entails the ability to bounce back with a positive attitude. With a continued understanding of the continuum between illness and health, there are days when I can do better, especially when I exercise, but I remember when I couldn’t even walk. The days were bleak, but the fight for health and wellness was never in vain.
There are options and resources available to assist me in moving toward wellness.
Achieving a higher level of wellness involves seven dimensions. These are also some of the choices and resources that can help on the path to health and wellness. The physical dimension includes avoiding abuse, maintaining nutrition, achieving fitness, and being able to participate in activities. The social dimensions include how a person interacts with others and whether or not they can build and keep close relationships while showing their emotions. The emotional aspect involves the ability to manage stress. The intellectual dimension, on the other hand, includes learning and using information. The spiritual dimension is made up of a system or force of belief that is currently in place and brings people together. Both external and internal factors influence health status, beliefs, and practices. Internal factors include biological factors like genes, age, gender, and development, psychological factors like self-concept and mind-body interactions, and cognitive factors like religious beliefs and lifestyle choices. External factors include social support, cultural beliefs, family, living standards, and physical environment.
Conclusions
For the health-illness continuum to work right, nurses are usually taught to care for patients rather than treat them. Feeling loved, safe, and connected is a determinant of the human experience. When doctors and nurses talk about personalized care, do we keep the patient’s experience in mind, or do we just use the patient as a source of technical information and a sense of authority? The essence of health promotion is to establish a relationship with the patient. When you think about the different parts of wellness, it’s easy to see how important the health-illness continuum is in forming the relationship between the patient and the healthcare team.
References
J. S. Greenberg (2015), A distinction between health and wellness. School Health, 55(10), pp. 403-406.
A. R. Payton (2017). Are mental health, mental illness, and psychological distress all on the same continuum or are they all different things? in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.J. Ogden (2012). A Textbook on Health Psychology: A Textbook on Health Psychology. Education by McGraw-Hill (UK).
