When I was younger, I had a very concerning view of what health was. I believed a person to be healthy if they were regularly physically active, they had proper nutrition, and they were not diagnosed with any diseases or conditions. This view was changed when I became older, and I began learning about social determinants of health in school. I realized that health wasn’t determined by a person’s body weight, absence of disease, or ability to follow Canada’s food guide, but it was much more!
The World Health Organization (WHO) considers a person to be healthy if they are completely physically, mentally, and socially well (World Health Organization, 2021). This means that if a person is considered healthy, they cannot suffer from any disease or condition. Therefore, anyone who suffers from conditions such as depression, high blood pressure, anxiety, or heart disease cannot be considered healthy even if they live a completely normal life. Dr. Cara Kiernan and Dr. Jason Karlawish have criticized the WHO’s definition of health and have expressed the need to update this definition. In their article, they profile an 83-year-old woman named Betty who takes daily medication to treat her high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and arthritis, but is extremely healthy and continues to live a full life with these conditions (Kiernan, C. & Karlawish, J., 2019).
WHO’s current definition of health would leave most people to be considered unhealthy. Huber, M. has criticized this definition of health and stated that it contributes to the medicalization of today’s society (Huber, M., 2011). With the current technology, conditions that would not be detected when the WHO’s definition first came out are now being diagnosed and treated since people with conditions are considered unhealthy (Huber, M., 2011). These treatments lead to pharmaceutical companies creating more drugs as treatments for these “conditions” (Huber, M., 2011).
In my opinion, the thought process that a person is unhealthy simply due to being diagnosed with a condition is dangerous. If a person sees themselves as unhealthy, they may put themselves in risky situations to make themselves healthy. For example, a person with anxiety may stop taking their medication because they do not want to be seen as unhealthy, according to the WHO’s definition of health. Overall, this definition desperately needs to be updated to consider many other factors that would consider a person to be healthy.
References
Huber, M. (2011). Health: How should we define it? British Medical Journal, 343(7817), 235-237. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.d4163
Kiernan, C. & Karlawish, J. (2019). It’s time to change the definition of ‘health’. STAT. Retrieved from https://www.statnews.com/2019/07/17/change-definition-health/
World Health Organization. (2021). What is the WHO definition of Health? Retrieved from: https://www.who.int/about/who-we-are/frequently-asked-questions
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