A psychological element of absence of well being should exist SUBJECTIVELY. The individual should FEEL bad, need to experience discomfiture for his condition to certify as an illness. To this level, we are warranted in categorizing all illness as “spiritual” or “psychological”.
Exists any other method of differentiating health from illness – a manner in which does NOT depend upon the report that the client offers concerning his subjective experience?
Some illness are manifest and others are immanent or hidden. Hereditary illness can exist – unmanifested – for generations. This raises the philosophical issue or whether a possible illness IS an illness?
It is beyond doubt that the physical impacts the psychological and the other method around. The capability to manage “self-governing” physical functions (such as heart beat) and psychological responses to pathogens of the brain are evidence of the artificialness of this difference.
The difference in between the client and the outdoors world is incorrect and unnecessary. Illness is a perturbation in the operation and management of the complex community understood as patient-world. Our environment is specified by our actions and output, psychological and physical.
Hence, one should question the classical distinction in between “internal” and “external”. Natural, “internal”, triggers – a heart flaw, a biochemical imbalance, a hereditary anomaly, a metabolic procedure gone awry – trigger illness.
On the other hand, issues of nurturance and environment – early youth abuse, for example, or poor nutrition – are “external” therefore are the “classical” pathogens (infections and bacteria) and mishaps.
Psychological states reduce the vulnerability or increase to externally caused illness. The within continuously connects with the outdoors and is so linked with it that all differences in between them are deceptive and synthetic. The finest example is, of course, medication: it is an external representative, it affects internal procedures and it has an extremely strong psychological correlate (= its effectiveness is affected by psychological elements as in the placebo impact).
Social criteria determine incorrect and best in health (specifically psychological health). Specific illness are accepted in particular parts of the world as a reality of life or even an indication of difference (e.g., the paranoid schizophrenic as picked by the gods). If there is no dis-ease there is no illness.
If the client feels excellent – it is not an illness, even if we all believe it is. If the client feels bad, ego-dystonic, not able to work – it is an illness, even when we all believe it isn’t. If somebody is ill and understands no much better (has actually never ever been healthy) – then his choice needs to be appreciated just after he is offered the opportunity to experience health.
All the efforts to present “unbiased” yardsticks of health are afflicted and philosophically infected by the insertion of worths, choices and concerns into the formula – or by subjecting the formula to them completely. One such effort is to specify health as “a boost in order or effectiveness of procedures” as contrasted with disease which is “a reduction in order (= boost of entropy) and in the effectiveness of procedures”. While being factually disputable, this dyad likewise suffers from a series of implicit value-judgements.
Health and illness are various states of affairs. Whether one is more suitable to the other refers the particular culture and society in which the concern is postured. Health (and its absence) is identified by using 3 “filters” as it were:
Is the body impacted?
Is the individual impacted? (dis-ease, the bridge in between “physical” and “mental disorders).
Is society impacted?
When it comes to psychological health the 3rd concern is typically developed as “is it regular” (= is it statistically the standard of this specific society in this specific time)?
We need to re-humanize illness. By enforcing upon concerns of health the pretensions of the precise sciences, we objectified the therapist and the client alike and entirely overlooked that which can not be measured or determined – the human mind, the human spirit.
To this degree, we are warranted in categorizing all illness as “spiritual” or “psychological”.
Psychological states reduce the vulnerability or increase to externally caused illness. If there is no dis-ease there is no illness. If the client feels great – it is not an illness, even if we all believe it is. If the client feels bad, ego-dystonic, not able to work – it is an illness, even when we all believe it isn’t.