Holistic Framework for Ill Health and Positive Health

Abstract

Person-centered health care involves the promotion of positive health as well as the prevention and treatment of ill health. Person-centered health care is effective as a result of its holistic approach to the creative cultivation of physical, mental, social, and spiritual well-being. Efforts at health promotion produce weak and inconsistent benefits when it does not address the whole person and engage people to actualize their own goals and values. The most consistent and strong predictor of both subjective well-being and objective health status in longitudinal studies is a creative personality profile characterized by being highly self-directed, cooperative, and self-transcendent. The cultivation of a healthy personality requires the integration of all three aspects of a person (that is, their body, thoughts, and psyche). Such integration depends on a holistic framework that recognizes that no component of a person’s being can be healthy when the other components are neglected because the functioning of the body, thought, and psyche are inseparable from one another. Likewise, specialists can provide useful skill but the long-term benefits of their contributions depend on effective coordination of care within a holistic framework. We suggest that health, happiness, and meaning can be cultivated most effectively by adopting a holistic framework that fosters the integration of physical, mental, social, and spiritual needs of people. Health care and promotion is likely to have only weak and consistent benefits in the absence of a holistic approach, particularly failing in preventing chronic disease.