Concept of Wellness

SUBSTANCE

In An Introduction to the Theoretical Basis of Nursing, Rogers states that "nursing is a humanistic science dedicated to compassionate concern for maintaining and promoting health, preventing illness, and caring for and rehabilitating the sick and disabled."1 Until recently, nursing has been more involved with preventing illness and caring for the sick and disabled than with the maintaining and promoting of health or illness. With the emphasis now on wellness, it is important to define what is meant by this concept of wellness. Because wellness is an accepted fact of life, it has not stimulated very much investigation. As I began studying this topic, I was reminded of the sculptor who was asked how he designed his work. He replied that he just chipped away the parts that did not belong so that the design was all that remained. It seemed to me that people defined health by chipping away all the things not related to it and what remained was health.

Funk and Wagnalls defines health as "soundness of any living organism."2 Taber states that "health or wholeness is a condition in which all functions of body and mind are normally active."1 Engel attempted to integrate the biological and psychological fields and stated that a person was in "a state of health (healthy) when functioning effectively, fulfilling needs, successfully responding to the requirements or demands of the environment, whether internal or external, and pursuing its biological destiny, including growth and reproduction."4 These are some examples of definitions but with all the attempts at defining health, normality and wellness there has not been agreement among professionals on the meaning of health.

Offer and Sabshin have pooled the major views of normality and categorized them into four perspectives.

The first of these perspectives is "normality as health" which focuses on the treatment of symptoms that overtly interfere with adequate functioning. If an individual does not show observable signs of illness he is well. Thus a definition of mental health would be the absence of observable psychotic process.

The second perspective views "normality as Utopia," or as Freud said, the "ideal fiction." It stresses "a harmonious and optimal blending of diverse elements of the mental apparatus that culminates in optimal functioning or selfactualization." The individual is...