HEALTH AND ILLNESS CONCEPTS

By Cecilia Gutiérrez A., Psychologist NSW SLASA.

psychologist@nswslasa.com.au   

The concepts of health and disease over time have been concepts that have interested professionals from different fields, as it has been a worldwide challenge to develop effective intervention programs from the prevention or promotion perspectives.

According to the Constitution of the World Health Organization (WHO) "Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well being, not merely the absence of disease." According to this perspective, health promotion can be understood as a process by which people increase control over health determinants and therefore improve it.

Within the health field and especially in the promotion field; a concept that has taken great importance lately is the resilience which occupies an important place in theory and research, especially regarding child development and adult mental health. Resilience is a concept that has been taken and developed in the field of psychology, especially developmental psychology to describe the ability of some people to confront and successfully overcome the stress and adversity, despite born and live in high-risk conditions. The term resilience is a concept which is taken from physics and incorporated into the area of psychology: "resilience" is the ability of a physical body to recover its original shape despite being subjected to high pressure, deforming pressure. By analogy, human sciences began using the concept that, from a psychosocial level is understood as an "effective confrontation that the child can do when facing stressful, severe and cumulative life events. Kotliarenco & Duenas (1996)

The resilience perspective gives emphasis on mental health and promotion rather than the disease. This is a key aspect, because beyond focusing on the discomfort, symptoms and maladaptive behaviours; it attempts to identify, understand and mobilize individual and environmental resources that are adaptation and confrontation effective. Thus, the Resilience approach is very attractive, especially when compared with the Risk approach which prevailed in the sixties, which emphasized the disease, the symptoms and characteristics associated with biological or social damage.