Wellness

• TYPE OF PSYCHOLOGY: Clinical; Community; Consulting; Counseling; Health; Organizational
• The term “wellness” as it is defined today is credited to the works of René Dubos, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1968 book, So Human an Animal. In his book, Dubos proposed a broader definition of health that had multiple dimensions and levels. To reach the highest level of health individuals must maximize their potential in each of six dimensions.

Introduction

Simply defined, wellness is the process of actively seeking good health. Wellness is generally obtained by making good lifestyle decisions. However, to fully understand what a good healthy lifestyle is requires further elaboration. Health can be divided into the following dimensions: physical, social, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, environmental, financial, and occupational. Optimal wellness requires individuals to achieve their potential in all of the dimensions.

In addition, wellness is not a discrete state but a continuum that ranges from premature disability or death to an optimal state of well-being. As people pursue their potential in the various dimensions, there can be both progression and regression. Once optimal wellness is achieved, people must still work to maintain it. Failure to continue the healthy habits that led to optimal wellness can cause individuals to move in the direction of chronic illness, disability, and death.

Physical Health

When considering health, most would think of physical health. Individuals in good physical health have an absence of disease, have lower risk of disease, and are physically fit. These people have healthy body weights and the ability to move their bodies around freely. This contributes to the capacity to perform activities of daily living that allow people to live independently, such as personal hygiene, dressing, rising from a chair, and preparing food.

Improving and maintaining physical health involves numerous lifestyle factors that individuals can control. One is exercise, which is planned physical activity to improve health and fitness. According to the American College of Sports Medicine, a good exercise program includes cardiorespiratory training that increases heart rate for 20 to 60 minutes of intense exercise three days a week or for 30 to 60 minutes of moderate exercise five days a week to condition the heart; resistance training every other day to increase strength of the skeletal muscles; flexibility to improve the range of motion of the joints; and neuromotor exercise two to three days a week to improve motor function and the sense of motion and spatial orientation. Exercise can also help to maintain a healthy weight in combination with a healthy diet, which improves physical health.

Eating right is another habit that improves physical health. A healthy diet includes eating enough calories to maintain an appropriate body weight and includes foods that are low in fat and sugar, high in complex carbohydrates, and a sensible amount of protein. A diet that focuses on fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains, with moderate amounts of low-fat dairy and lean meats, is recommended.

Physical health is also enhanced by the abstention from alcohol. In 2024, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advised that excessive alcohol consumption increases the drinker's risk of illness, injury, and death, and that even moderate consumption increases these risks compared to abstaining. While some past studies had suggested that a couple of drinks per day could improve the levels of cholesterol in the blood and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, the studies were problematic because they did not consider factors such as genetics, exercise, diet, or tobacco use. Alcohol can be addicting. Drinking too much alcohol negatively affects the liver and brain. In the long term, alcohol increases the risk of liver disease and some cancers.

Avoiding all forms of tobacco and nicotine, including e-cigarettes, and illegal drugs is essentially a requirement for high-level wellness. Nicotine has no benefits to the human body, is addictive, and is associated with higher risk for cancer, cardiovascular diseases and emphysema. Misusing any type of drug can lead to addiction and serious health consequences. All who use nicotine-containing products or misuse drugs should try to quit, and those who do not should never start.

Protection from infectious diseases is also required for physical health. The best way to protect against infectious diseases is to get appropriate vaccinations and limit exposure to pathogens. This includes staying away from those who are contagious. In addition, regular handwashing, not sharing utensils and drinking cups, and keeping hands away from the eyes, nose, and mouth are good habits. Boosting the immune system by exercising regularly, eating a healthy diet, getting sufficient sleep, and managing stress is also beneficial.

Social Health

Optimal wellness includes fulfilling interpersonal relationships with others that include friends and family, as well as interacting with other people in society. Good social health requires communication skills that allow for the development of supportive relationships and adaptation to different social situations.

To enhance social health, individuals must develop healthy relationships with others. A key to healthy relationships is trust, which is facilitated by good communication. To develop trust, two or more people must believe the others are honest, reliable, and predictable. To improve social health, individuals must learn to disclose the appropriate amount of personal information to others while being a good listener.

Intellectual Health

Being factually knowledgeable is not the major component of intellectual health. Rather, intellectual health involves creativity, objective reasoning, critical thinking, and common sense. People of all intellectual abilities can achieve intellectual health by pursuing new knowledge, practicing sound decision-making and learning from their mistakes.

To promote intellectual health, people need to continually become open to new ideas. In this process, they must pursue new skills and learning opportunities. The activities they choose should be mentally stimulating, and they should find ways to be creative. By continually challenging themselves intellectually, they will move toward high-level wellness.

Emotional Health

A major component of emotional health is appropriately controlling behavior. This is facilitated by developing self-esteem and self-confidence. Life is full of changes, and with good emotional health, people can manage the associated stresses and appropriately respond to challenges.

While some people may need professional help to optimize their emotional health, good stress management can be accomplished individually. Developing time, money, and emotional management skills can help reduce the corresponding stresses. Getting good exercise and sufficient sleep while eating a healthy diet are beneficial. Learning to calm the body by practicing yoga, tai chi, meditation, or progressive muscle relaxation, among other techniques, can help to reduce the body's stress.

Spiritual Health

Spiritual health is having values and beliefs that guide one's life and provide a purpose for existence. Organized religion is a source for this guidance; however, spirituality is not limited to religion. People can find spiritual contentment from spiritual activities like meditation and yoga.

Developing spiritual health can be accomplished in many ways, such as training the body, expanding the mind, focusing on one's immediate environment, and helping others. Training the body through exercise can be done with any type of aerobic activity where individuals relax and focus the mind while exercising. Yoga is exercise specifically designed to improve spiritual health through physical means. There are many types of yoga that focus on different physical mechanisms. Some focus on breathing and flexibility, while others are more active. Laughing yoga had become popular by the 2020s.

Another way to develop spiritual health is by expanding the mind by reading and learning about spiritual subjects. Attending group meetings or lectures also develops the mind. In some cases, seeking therapy from a professional is beneficial. People can attend to their surroundings by studying and observing them, empty their minds through forms of meditation, or focus the mind in prayer to pursue optimal spiritual well-being. Volunteering to help others is another approach.

Environmental Health

How individuals interact with their surroundings determines their environmental health. There are many threats in the environment, and minimizing the negative effects of these hazards can contribute to overall wellness. The hazards include physical, chemical, and biological factors as well as other factors that affect human behavior. While changing one's environment by moving to a new location is sometimes possible, often people must adapt by finding better ways to relate to their current settings.

The key to maximizing environmental health is managing behaviors to cope with threats from outside the body. These threats could be weather, pollution, crime, or infectious diseases. Depending on where people live and spend their time, there will be different risks. People must be prepared for storms and weather extremes. If there is pollution, people must minimize their exposures. High-crime areas should be avoided, and if they cannot be avoided, then risks should be reduced by traveling on well-lit sidewalks and with a group. To protect against infectious diseases, people need to use good hygiene. There are many other environmental risks, and it is important that these risks be managed to promote overall wellness.

Financial and Occupational Health

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration includes two other dimensions of health: financial and occupational. It defines financial health as being content with one's present and potential financial circumstances. Developing financial literacy about banking, debt, credit, savings, and investments can help improve financial health. To develop good financial health, individuals should also track spending, plan purchases, and set goals for both short-term financial needs, such as bill paying, and long-term ones, such as retirement savings. Poor financial health is also connected to poor mental-emotional health, including disorders such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and even suicidal ideation; however, it remains unclear whether poor finances lead to poor mental health, or vice versa.

Occupational health is the sense of satisfaction and fulfillment one derives from working. This aspect of health also often overlaps with other areas of health and wellness, frequently involving social, emotional, and intellectual health. People must strive to achieve an appropriate balance between work and other personal commitments. Appropriately managing work-related stress and interacting positively with colleagues are other goals of occupational health. Occupationally health people have a positive attitude toward their work and enjoy contributing their skills and energy toward efforts they believe in.

Pursuing Optimal Wellness

The different dimensions of health are interrelated by lifestyle habits that affect more than one dimension. Exercise can benefit physical, spiritual, and emotional health. Volunteering and helping others can promote social and spiritual health. Avoiding pathogens can improve physical and environmental health.

To successfully achieve high-level wellness, individuals must focus on personal development and the lifestyle variables that affect health. Those who want to attain optimal wellness should first develop awareness and knowledge about health behaviors. In this process, they need to determine which elements contribute to wellness and how they affect them as individuals. The next step is to analyze which behaviors need to change, how they must change, and if the motivation is adequate for them to be successful.

After the behaviors to be changed have been identified, a plan of action should be developed. Many strategies are available and begin with setting realistic goals. In the planning process, barriers to success should be identified, as well as how the barriers will be overcome and who will support the behavior changes. Then it is time to take action. This may be the most difficult step in the process because simply beginning does not result in success. The plan must continually be carried out and even must be maintained after optimal wellness has been achieved because just getting there is not the purpose. Maintaining optimal wellness is.

The absence of disease is not health. Good health is achieving high-level wellness in all six dimensions of health. Physical health is only one dimension and must be complemented by social, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and environmental health.

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