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HEALTH - ILLNESS - DISEASE. A PERSON-CENTERED PERSPECTIVE

Joachim Sturmberg

Abstract


Health, illness and disease are terms that appear to be used interchangeably amongst health professionals when describing their roles and responsibilities. However, health, illness and disease are distinctively different entities. Health, illness and dis-ease, the original meaning of the term disease, are subjective states, whereas disease now defines an objective pathologic/patho-physiologic state. Health, illness and dis-ease are experienced as much in the presence as absence of identifiable “pathology” and result from the experiential dynamics that define complex adaptive states. These states result from the dynamic interactions between the somatic, psychological, social and semiotic or cognitive domains that characterize a person’s integrity. These insights are the basis for a proposed re-definition of health.

Keywords


Complex adaptive states, complex adaptive systems, complexity, complexity theory, health, illness, person-centered healthcare, philosophy of disease, philosophy of health, philosophy of medicine, somato-psycho-socio-semiotic model of health,

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5750/ejpch.v3i2.912

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