Health and Happiness

10 Key excerpts on "Health and Happiness"

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  Well-Being in Adolescent Girls

  From Theory to Interventions

  • Elena Savina, Jennifer M. Moran(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  1 Well-Being Definitions and Frameworks

  DOI: 10.4324/9781003105534-1

  In 1948, the World Health Organization defined health as a “state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (WHO, 1948 , p. 28). This definition provided a vision for the mental health field delineating positive aspects of human functioning. Nevertheless, for many years a medical model dominated the field. This model defined health as the absence of illness, rather than the presence of wellness. This medical model “narrows our focus on what is weak and defective about people to the exclusion of what is strong and healthy. It emphasizes abnormality over normality, poor adjustment over healthy adjustment and sickness over health” (Maddux, 2008 , p. 56). Furthermore, the medical model places adjustment and maladjustment inside the person, but disregards complex person-environment interactions, social and cultural values, and the role of societal institutions in human functioning.

  In the 1990s, the positive psychology movement shifted the focus away from pathology and toward human strength, resiliency, and positive functioning. One of the founders of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, argued that:

  psychology is not just the study of disease, weakness, and damage; it is also the study of strength and virtue. Treatment is not just fixing what is wrong; it is also building what is right. Psychology is not just about illness or health; it also is about work, education, insight, love, growth, and play.

  (Seligman, 2002 , p. 4)

  Positive psychology became the study of the strengths and virtues that allow both individuals and communities to thrive (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000 ). Seligman (2002 ) further proposed a concept of positive mental health that delineated human flourishing and living a fulfilled life. This concept places human functioning on a continuum, with mental illness representing one end of the continuum and optimal psychological health the other. Human well-being became a central concept in positive psychology (Seligman, 2011

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  Thinking about the Lifecourse

  A Psychosocial Introduction

  • Elizabeth Frost, Stuart McClean(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  In this chapter, then, we consider how we can link up some of these ideas and consider how well-being can be psychosocially conceptualized. We start by looking at health and well-being briefly, then draw on some classic philosophy to orientate our ideas. We spend some time discussing the strengths and problems with key ideas from positive psychology before exploring some nuanced notions of, for example, ‘good enough’ well-being from object relations theorists. A critique of self-help and self-oriented ‘methods’ for fulfilment is offered by highlighting Giddens’ work. A central section of the chapter considers the psychosocial notions of resilience and of relational well-being and friendship, though Honneth’s work on recognition mainly falls in the next chapter in relation to ‘ill-being’. At the end we look briefly at how individuals frequently describe their own well-being as connected to life-changing events. Primarily, then, this chapter considers how best we can understand well-being within a psychosocial framework and as such some cross-referencing with ‘ill-being’ in the next chapter will be used here; this chapter and the next should therefore be read together.

  Health and well-being

  ‘Well-being is a quality in demand in today’s society’ suggests Sointu (2005: 255), and feelings of well-being are ‘regarded as a state of virtue’ (Furedi, 2003: 31). We may consider why this is. Some of the questions we could ask ourselves and have been asked by others are, is well-being about happiness, is it about success or achievement, or is it in a psychosocial sense about how you are doing well in the world? In the broader context of the individual and their growth and development, is it also about equality and ‘the good society’?

  Over a half a century ago, in 1946, the World Health Organization (WHO) at the World Health Assembly came up with their definition of health that broadened the concept of health to include, as they saw it, the psychosocial dimension, taking into account subjective experience: ‘Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’ (World Health Assembly, 1948). This is one of their most well-known and oft-cited statements, and the term ‘psychosocial well-being’ has since become popular in the study of mental health, for example, adopting the WHO definition.

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  Redefining Well-Being in Nations and Organizations

  A Process of Improvement

  • Ali Qassim Jawad, William Scott-Jackson(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  One of the confusing aspects of well-being in research and practice is that the concept is ill-defined or rather is well-defined but defined very differently in various disciplines. The definitions tend to range from notions of overall health (physical or psychological – often separated) to an assumed state of sustained contentment caused by a range of input factors such as housing, employment, health, social life and so on. It is conflated with related constructs such as quality of life, happiness, health and engagement. In organizational settings and literature, it is most commonly differentiated from ‘engagement’, with ‘well-being’ representing mental and physical health (Utriainen et al. 2014), and ‘engagement’ representing work-focused energy leading to higher productivity at work (Costa et al. 2014). One of the issues is that the conception of well-being can be seen as a philosophical question to do with the observer’s viewpoint (Varelius 2004), including whether well-being is an objective quality of life (that is factual and non-perceptual) or whether it is a response to situations, as perceived and experienced differently by different individuals (that is subjective response to stimuli).

  Well-being is most often defined as a worthwhile outcome in its own right (in contrast with engagement, for example, which most often seen as a way of achieving valued outcomes such as productivity). However, some researchers have investigated the results of well-being, including Bryson et al. (2014), who found clear associations between well-being and workplace performance and quality but no association between short-term positive/negative work-related affect and performance.

  Many definitions of well-being include assumptions on its causes or components. Michaelson et al. (2012: 6), for example, in pointing out the difference between short-term happiness and longer-term well-being, state that well-being includes ‘happiness but also other things such as how satisfied people are with their lives as a whole and things such as autonomy (having a sense of control over your life) and purpose

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  Wellbeing for Sustainability in the Global Workplace

  • Paola Ochoa, Maria-Teresa Lepeley, Peter Essens, Paola Ochoa, Maria-Teresa Lepeley, Peter Essens(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In this line, Robertson and Cooper (2011) propose a model of Occupational Psychological Wellbeing that embraces a double psychological scope – affective and propositional – in which happiness appears as a synthesis of personal satisfaction and personal growth. According to Kashdan, Biswas-Diener, and King (2008), an integrated concept of happiness integrates pleasure, satisfaction with life, virtuous practice, and achievement of relevant goals. Work wellbeing consists of a psychosocial state of cognitive and emotional joyful living, leading to the ability to successfully and flexibly interrelate job responsibilities with personal and professional competences, resources, and organizational demands. Aiming in this direction, the World Health Organization (WHO) defines a Healthy Workplace as one that facilitates access to physical, psychological, and social wellbeing experiences for people in a work environment that enables them to develop their projects and achieve work goals (WHO, 2010, 2017).

  Benefits of work wellbeing

  The complex and intense relationships between work and wellbeing have traditionally been studied by work and organizational scientists, taking as reference the conventional medical view of occupational health: a reactive approach aimed at the resolution or handling of problems based on mitigating or eliminating negative effects. This has led to a marked pathological bias in the study of wellbeing at work, which has been scored as labor malaise. Schaufeli and Bakker (2004) criticize that, throughout the twentieth century, psychological research on negative aspects of work experience (focusing on “symptoms” of distress, burnout, anxiety, depression, minor mental disorders, psychophysiological dysfunctions) dominated with a ratio of 15 to 1 over positive dimensions such as happiness, satisfaction, wellbeing, and self-realization. However, the turn of the twenty-first century opens the way to global approaches that assess negative and positive poles of health and wellbeing at work.

  In the study on work wellbeing, the initial emphasis on economic dimension and physical, material, and technological ecology has shifted towards the psychosocial and organizational aspects of work. Similarly, wage hedonism increasingly coexists with the eudemonic search for expressive and meaningful elements of work. People do not work only for money but also for many non-salary com pensations, such as good working conditions, safety and health at work, job stability, growth opportunities, career prospects, recognition by the organization, positive social climate or autonomy, and participation in professional decision-making (Bakker & Schaufeli, 2008; Bakker et al ., 2008; Blanch, Sahagún, Cantera & Cervantes, 2010; Goulart, Blanch, Sahagún & Bobsin, 2012; Granero et al

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  Applied Topics in Health Psychology

  • Marie Louise Caltabiano, Lina Ricciardelli(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  In 1946 the World Health Organization (WHO) introduced a revised definition of health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (WHO, 1946, p. 100). However, the traditional “disease model” of human functioning, which focused primarily on pathology, weaknesses, and treating illness, persisted. By including psychological and social aspects of individual health, concerns regarding wellbeing and satisfaction with life began to emerge.

  Martin Seligman (2002, 2003) proposed a paradigm shift to a positive model of psychology, which focused on positive subjective experiences, strengths, and promoting health and wellbeing. Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) predicted that positive psychology would “allow psychologists to understand and build those factors that allow individuals, communities, and societies to flourish” (p. 13). Positive psychology, as a theoretical framework, does not imply the dichotomization of human experience into positive or negative; rather it views experience as a continuum that spans the whole spectrum of human experiences from health to illness and from distress to wellbeing (Keyes, 2002; WHO, 2005). For example, positive and negative psychological states can occur contiguously or even simultaneously, and even when faced with highly stressful circumstances, positive psychological states can occur (Folkman & Moskowitz, 2000).

  Gable and Haidt (2005) defined positive psychology as “the study of the conditions and processes that contribute to the flourishing or optimal functioning of people, groups, and institutions” (p. 104). Seligman (2003) forwarded three pillars of positive psychology: positive subjective experiences (e.g., optimism, hope, happiness); positive individual characteristics (e.g., personal strengths that promote mental health); and positive social institutions and communities (e.g., those that contribute to individual happiness and health). According to Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000), “the aim of Positive Psychology is to begin to catalyse a change in the focus of psychology from a preoccupation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building positive qualities” (p. 5).

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  Routledge Handbook of Well-Being

  • Kathleen Galvin, Kathleen T. Galvin(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  What then is the relation between the concepts of quality of life and health when specified in this way? Let me put the various interpretations of the concepts between each other. First, I mention quality of life as welfare, the person’s objective life situation. Second, we have the person’s evaluation of his or her life situation. Third: the person’s happiness with life. On the health side: first the person’s bio-statistical health. Second, the person’s holistic health. Third, the person’s subjective bio-statistical or holistic health. These notions are all clearly quite different. They have different definitions. Some of these notions are very far from each other. A person’s welfare in the sense of his or her objective life situation, for instance, is something very different from the person’s subjective health. Some of the concepts, however, are much closer and can sometimes be difficult to separate. We could perhaps in particular scrutinize the relation between quality of life as happiness and the concept of subjective health in the mental state interpretation. Subjective health in this interpretation entails the subject’s well-being of a certain sort, and subjective ill health entails a kind of ill-being. When a person is in pain because of a disease, then this person is feeling poorly and is normally unhappy with his or her life at that moment. Here is then a close relation. Can these notions then be differentiated at all?

  Indeed they can. Subjective health cannot entail, pace the famous WHO definition of health (1948), all kinds of human well-being. It entails only sensational well-being and parts of emotional well-being. In general, it entails such well-being as is directly dependent on the state of the body and the psyche. Other kinds of well-being or ill-being, for instance a depression following the loss of a loved person, do not directly belong to the ill health of this person. (However, they may be causal factors behind a person’s ill health.)

  Assume now for a moment that we have been able to distinguish fairly clearly between the mentioned concepts of quality of life and health. How crucial is this exercise for the field of health care? Does it matter very much for how care should be organized? Should, for instance, one consequence be that health care should only deal with health matters in a more restricted sense and that considerations with regard to quality of life (in some of the senses specified above) should be directed to other kinds of carers, such as psychologists and priests?

  This seems at first sight to be a reasonable demarcation. Within health care we should not seek to measure or affect people’s total quality of life, at least not with means outside the sphere of medical competency, it might be contended. We must, according to this line of thought, instead focus on the strictly disease-related quality of life, that which has chiefly to do with pain, mobility, ability to sleep, etc., phenomena which are directly related to the disease in question.

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  Stress and Quality of Working Life

  • Ana Maria Rossi, James A. Meurs, Pamela L. Perrewé(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Information Age Publishing

    (Publisher)

  WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING? Despite the growing interest in psychological well-being, great variation still exists in the definition and conceptualization of psychological well-being at work (Danna & Griffin, 1999; Fisher, 2014). Although researchers have re- cently made efforts to summarize existing knowledge on psychological well- being acquired in the past 40 years (e.g., Allin, 2014; Diehl, Hay, & Berg, 2011; Diener, 1984; Fredrickson, 2013; Ryan & Deci, 2001), the understand- ing of the concept varies greatly (Danna & Griffin, 1999; Harris & Cameron, 2005; Ilies, Aw, & Pluut, 2015; Kesebir & Diener, 2008). As a consequence, a wide range of conceptual models have emerged concurrently, often resting on implicit or unverified theoretical assumptions (Bono, Davies, & Rasch, 2012; Diener, 1994; Ryan & Deci, 2001). In most cases, it is only by scrutiniz- ing the measures chosen in a given study that one can deduct the underlying conceptualization adopted by investigators (Diener, 1994). Despite these de- ficiencies, conceptual proposals about the nature of psychological well-being have mainly been articulated around two independent but related research perspectives, anchored to the origins of psychological well-being. In line with their philosophical roots, these proposals are considered to stem from a he- donic or eudaimonic approach of well-being (Ryan & Deci, 2001). Hedonic Approach The contemporary study of well-being from a hedonic perspective emerged in the 1950s as part of a major stream of research intending to 70  V. DAGENAIS-DESMARAIS et al. measure the quality of life from a subjective perspective (Keyes, Shmotkin, & Ryff, 2002). The notion of psychological well-being specifically was high- lighted by Ed Diener in the 1980s, who spread the use of the term subjec- tive well-being, frequently used interchangeably with the term happiness, to describe this emerging field of study (Deci & Ryan, 2008).

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  Psychology and Social Work

  Applied Perspectives

  • Gabriela Misca, Peter Unwin(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Polity

    (Publisher)

  Health psychology is devoted to understanding the psychological factors associated with health and illness, and it focuses on health promotion and the prevention and treatment of illness alongside health policy formation. Health psychologists share fields of practice with social work, nursing and other disciplines aimed towards understanding and changing health-related behaviour. As health and illness are conceptualized on a continuum, health psychology is concerned with the onset of illness, help seeking, symptom perception, illness cognitions, illness adaption, behaviour change, social support and health outcomes, all of which are potential social work practice arenas as well.

  Matarazzo (1982: 4) provided one of the first formulations of a definition of health psychology, as:

  the aggregate of the specific educational, scientific, and professional contributions of the discipline of psychology to the promotion and maintenance of health, the prevention and treatment of illness, the identification of etiologic and diagnostic correlates of health, illness, and related dysfunction, and to the analysis and improvement of the health care system and health policy formation.

  The way in which social workers approach the assessment of people’s needs involves the individual, their family setting and the wider environment. When a person’s circumstances are affected by poor health, social workers must consider ways in which support can be provided, both for the individual involved and for their family.

  Applying health psychology to social work practice

  Health psychology and social work share many areas of focus and concerns as well as common approaches, as both professions seek to help individuals and families to overcome complex problems. Most social workers deal with families where damaging health behaviours – smoking, lack of exercise, stress, unhealthy relationships, substance abuse, heavy medication regimes – are the reality and are often exacerbated by environmental issues such as poverty, poor housing environment and ill health.

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  Play in Healthcare for Adults

  Using play to promote health and wellbeing across the adult lifespan

  • Alison Tonkin, Julia Whitaker, Alison Tonkin, Julia Whitaker(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  The human need to achieve health and wellbeing is not exclusive to one period of life and it is increasingly recognized that the health and wellbeing of individuals impacts upon all other aspects of their lives. There is progressive emphasis put upon ‘community-centred’ approaches which increase people’s control over their health and wellbeing (NHS England 2015) and consideration is being given to how this health autonomy can be achieved across the lifespan. Although the notion of play may ‘sit’ more comfortably within the early periods of life, it has a role throughout the whole of the lifespan. The National Institute for Play (2015) cites play ‘as basic and as pervasive a natural phenomenon as sleep’. However, the notion of play does not conform to a ‘one size fits all’ model and it is therefore important to understand how play can have a positive health impact which is responsive to, and supportive of, individual needs and capabilities.

  Background context

  Positive health is an evolving and fluctuating concept that incorporates a variety of important strands. A holistic view recognizes that the idea of health and wellbeing changes throughout the lifespan and that people at different stages of life have different notions of what constitutes good health and the factors that may affect it. There are various ways to represent the breakdown components of health and wellbeing; the one used to scaffold this chapter is the six aspects of health as identified by Bruce and Meggitt (2005) and outlined in Table 5.1 .

  TABLE 5.1

    Adapted from Bruce and Meggitt (2005)

  Aspect	Description
  Physical	How the body functions
  Emotional	The expression of emotions and being able to deal with thoughts and feelings e.g. fear, frustration, happiness
  Social	Interacting and relating with other people; forming and maintaining friendships and relationships
  Spiritual	Associated with a quest for ‘inner peace’ and personal principles and conduct
  Mental	The organization of thoughts and being able to think clearly
  Environmental	Factors linked to the environment which influence the health of individuals e.g. pollution or social housing concerns

  Within these six core aspects, play has a pivotal role in positively contributing to the means of achieving and facilitating each aspect. The spontaneity, creativity and flexibility of play allows it to percolate through the layers of health, enabling adaptation to meet individual needs and capabilities.

  The six aspects of health Physical health

  Physical health is perhaps the most readily identifiable aspect of overall health and wellbeing. The importance of maintaining and conditioning the body and its functions throughout the lifespan is at the epicentre of health and medical care. It is globally recognized that regular physical activity reduces morbidity and mortality and, in the UK alone, it has been quoted that ‘physical inactivity costs the NHS an estimated £0.9 billion per year’ (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence 2015: 5). The nature of this burden grants physical health a high priority on the healthcare agenda. It is recognized that, although health is influenced by individual choice, government policy makers and other powerful groups in society also play a part in personal health choices (Lloyd 2007).

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  Well-being

  Productivity and Happiness at Work

  • Ivan Robertson, Cary Cooper(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  PART 1 WHY WELL-BEING MATTERS CHAPTER 1 FOR INDIVIDUALS Work can make you sick – and work can make you happy. Which one happens depends on who you are, what you do and how you are treated at work. Work that is rewarding, involving good relationships with colleagues and opportunities to feel a sense of achievement on a regular basis is a key factor in psychological well-being (PWB). Good PWB, as we shall see later in this chapter, is linked to good physical heath. Dull and monotonous work, difficult relationships with others and work that is impossibly demanding ‘or lacks meaning’ damages resilience, PWB and physical health. Later chapters will explain how PWB can be damaged or enhanced by work and will also cover the key workplace factors that influence PWB. This chapter sets the scene for what follows by explaining why PWB at work matters and how it is linked to overall sickness and health. Overall, well-being includes three main parts: physical, social and psychological well-being (Figure 1.1). This book focuses on psychologi- cal (mental) well-being in particular. That does not mean that the other forms of well-being are less important than PWB. In the workplace however, when industrial accidents and danger- ous working conditions are set to one side, PWB is most important – and (apart from accidents, etc.) work has more direct impact on PWB, rather than the physical or social aspects of well-being. At the most basic level, PWB is quite similar to other terms that refer to positive mental states, such as happiness or satisfaction, and in many ways it is not necessary, or helpful, in a book like this to worry about fine distinctions between such terms. If I say that I’m happy, or very satisfied with my life you can be pretty sure that my PWB is quite high! It is important though to explain that some other popular terms such as “job satisfaction” or “motivation” are not the same as PWB.

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