Open AccessDeterminants of Well-Being and Their Implications for Health Care
Author(s) -
John F. Helliwell
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
annals of nutrition and metabolism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.926
H-Index - 81
eISSN - 1421-9697
pISSN - 0250-6807
DOI - 10.1159/000499141
Subject(s) - happiness , context (archaeology) , health care , medical prescription , well being , psychology , social environment , gerontology , medicine , social psychology , nursing , sociology , economic growth , social science , economics , psychotherapist , paleontology , biology
The paper explains how subjective well-being can be measured, how the resulting data are being used to document human progress and how health care can be changed to take advantage of what has been learned. The evaluations that people make of their own lives document, and permit the explanation of, life satisfaction levels that differ greatly among countries and communities. Research seeking to explain these happiness differences, and their related differences in mortality and morbidity, exposes the importance of the social context. There is an opportunity and need to change health care from the diagnosis and treatment of illness to the fostering of wellness. The importance of the social context in the successful design and delivery of health and happiness is so great as to support a prescription to turn the “I” into “we,” thereby turning illness into wellness by making the production and maintenance of health and happiness a much more collaborative activity, even in the presence of the increasing complexity of medical science.