Positive health
By exploring the theories that underpin our participants’ experiences, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of how these frameworks apply in practical settings.
Summary
- The idea of positive health looks at health in a broader way. It doesn’t just focus on a person’s illness or see them only as a patient.
- This approach views health as a person’s ability to handle physical, emotional, and social challenges while staying in control of their own life. It sees health as more than just the presence or absence of disease—it’s about how well someone adapts to their circumstances.
- Positive health includes six key areas: physical health, daily activities, mental well-being, sense of purpose, social connections, and overall quality of life.
- This model helps start conversations about what matters most to a person and what health means to them. It’s not about simply ‘thinking positive’, but about understanding health in a broader and more personal way.
For a long time, health has been perceived as the absence of disease, and healthcare as the treatment of diseases. In contrast, the positive health concept takes a broader approach to health. It avoids reducing persons to their condition and seeing them primarily as patients. Rather, this approach to health sees it as the ability of people to respond in a resilient way to the physical, emotional and social challenges of life, and remain in charge of their own affairs wherever possible. It offers a more dynamic approach where health is not about the static absence or presence of a disease or condition or about physical and mental functioning, but rather about the resilience of people to adapt to their life circumstances.
Positive health is conceptualised as a web with six dimensions, which not only include physical health, daily functioning and mental well-being, but also sense of purpose, social participation and quality of life. The element of meaning and spirituality inherent in sense of purpose is considered to be very important for how people adapt to the challenges of life, and therefore an important factor in their feeling healthy. The model is aiming to provide a conversation starter with people about what is important to them, what constitutes health for them, and treating them accordingly. It is not about ‘thinking positive’, but about a broader take on what a healthy life means to people.