Define health and wellness

Key points • Activities that boost well-being must be done long-term in order to maintain benefits. • Building overall well-being requires satisfactory functioning in terms of one's emotions, body, social network, life purpose, and community. • Having a growth mindset or a positive attitude can help one build other well-being skills more easily. Source: Pixabay Well-being is the experience of health, Well-being is something sought by just about everyone because it includes so many positive things — feeling happy, healthy, socially connected, and purposeful. Unfortunately, well-being appears to be in decline, at least in the U.S. And increasing your well-being can be tough without knowing what to do and how to do it. Can You Actually Improve Your Well-Being? Increasing your well-being is simple; there are tons of skills you can build. But increasing your well-being is not always easy: Figuring out what parts of well-being are most important for you and figuring out how, exactly, to build well-being skills usually require some extra help. But you have to stick to it. If you are feeling better after five weeks, you can't just stop there. Why? Well, you probably already know that if you stop eating healthy and go back to eating junk food, then you'll end up back where you started. It turns out that the exact same thing is true for different types of well-being. If you want to maintain the benefits you gain, you'll have to continue to engage in well-being-boosting practices to ...

Emotional wellness or well-being refers to the awareness and understanding a person has about their emotions and how well they are able to manage through different life events. Emotional well-being, or emotional health or wellness, refers to how well people are able to accept and manage their emotions and cope with challenges throughout life. Emotional well-being can affect how well someone can function day to day or how they are able to deal with change or uncertainty. Difficulties in emotional well-being may have a negative effect on a person’s mental and physical health. This article looks at emotional well-being, what factors can affect it, signs someone may be experiencing difficulties with emotional well-being, and tips to improve it. Share on Pinterest Milles Studio/Stocksy The Uncomfortable or painful emotions and overwhelming thoughts can affect how well individuals function and may make people feel they are losing control of their lives. By gaining awareness of the emotions each person feels and how to process them, the NCEW says people can regain a feeling of control, minimize difficulties, and continue to function healthily. According to the It can also affect how well individuals are able to handle stressful situations and challenges, how they adapt to change, and how they respond to difficult life events. Emotional well-being can affect relationships, work, and overall mental and physical health. Issues with emotional well-being can also affect physical healt...

• Mental health is more than the absence of mental disorders. • Mental health is an integral part of health; indeed, there is no health without mental health. • Mental health is determined by a range of socioeconomic, biological and environmental factors. • Cost-effective public health and intersectoral strategies and interventions exist to promote, protect and restore mental health. Mental health is an integral and essential component of health. The WHO constitution states: "Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." An important implication of this definition is that mental health is more than just the absence of mental disorders or disabilities. Mental health is fundamental to our collective and individual ability as humans to think, emote, interact with each other, earn a living and enjoy life. On this basis, the promotion, protection and restoration of mental health can be regarded as a vital concern of individuals, communities and societies throughout the world.

Anna Kirkland is associate professor of women's studies and political science at the University of Michigan. She holds a JD and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley (Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program). Kirkland is the author of Fat Rights: Dilemmas of Difference and Personhood (2008) and coeditor with Jonathan Metzl of Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality (2010). Her current book project explores how activists and government actors come to know and understand vaccine injuries and what recent debates over vaccine safety reveal about democratic engagement with volatile scientific questions in the contemporary United States. Recent publications include “Credibility Battles in the Autism Litigation” (2012), “The Legitimacy of Vaccine Critics: What Is Left after the Autism Hypothesis?” (2012), and “The Environmental Account of Obesity: A Case for Feminist Skepticism” (2011). Wellness as Buzzword Wellness is a popular buzzword these days. One finds wellness programs, wellness centers, wellness contests, wellness conferences, wellness journals, wellness administrators, wellness awards, wellness tourism, and even a Wellness brand cat and dog food (complete with its own blog and website asking, “What is true wellness?”). Like “intersectionality” in feminist scholarship (Davis wellness signals its usefulness for framing consensus in contemporary American society. That consensus is that health is more than just the absence of disease, that health prom...

What is resilience, why is it so important, and how do you know if you’re resilient enough? Resilience refers to both the process and the outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, according to the “It’s your ability to withstand adversity and bounce back and grow despite life’s downturns,” says RELATED: Resilience Resource Center It’s important to note that being resilient requires a skill set that you can work on and grow over time. Building resilience takes time, strength, and help from people around you; you’ll likely experience setbacks along the way. It depends on personal behaviors and skills (like self-esteem and communication skills), as well as external things (like social support and resources available to you). Being resilient does not mean that people don’t experience stress, emotional upheaval, and suffering. Demonstrating resilience includes working through emotional pain and suffering. There is emotional resilience, in which a person can tap into realistic optimism even when dealing with a crisis. Physical resilience refers to the body’s ability to adapt to challenges and recover quickly. Community resilience refers to the ability of groups of people to respond to and recover from adverse situations, such as natural disasters, acts of violence, or economic hardship. People face all kinds of adversity in life. There are personal crises, such as illness, loss of a loved one, abuse, bullying, job loss, and financial instabil...