Health dimensions and their interpretation

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines three dimensions of health: physical, psychological and social. For many people the most familiar of these is physical health, while the concept of psychological health is somewhat blurry, and social health is still largely confined to rhetoric or the pages of books.

Lifegame offers a fourth dimension: coping in everyday life. Often, the most important aspect of our daily decision-making is coping in each situation, and not the traditional dimensions of health. Age and interaction skills greatly influence the means that we use for coping.

Physical health is often defined as loss of health: illness or injury can prejudice our functional capacity for action and cause symptoms. These symptoms are physical: pain, fever and dysfunction, or even such things as rashes or wounds. However, physical health can be restored, and the means of doing so are familiar ? exercise and diet being the main ones throughout life.

Psychological health means mental health. People who are mentally healthy have adequate self-esteem, can cope with problems in life without uncontrollable anxiety, recognise emotions, and are able to express themselves in ways that are socially acceptable. Losses to psychological health are mental health problems that may be either slight or severe. Depression can be a mild or incapacitating illness. It can also be an unconscious way of coping.

In psychological health, as well as other facets of health, hereditary factors, and especially the circumstances of childhood and youth and family relations affect a person?s development. Choices that support mental health are such things as exercise, sufficient rest and stimulation.

Social health means the ability to get along in one?s own community, recognition of unwritten social rules and feeling needed in different communities. Social health is affected by the possibility of making choices, and how people experience the surrounding environment. Relationships with people close to you are a part of social health. Damaging factors for social health can be such things as loneliness and substance abuse. Social health is promoted by being part of different communities, the closest usually being family and relatives, friends and neighbours.

Coping in different situations in life usually demands independence and an ability for decision-making and logical reasoning. It can also require intuitive action based on one?s own feelings. Coping demands situation recognition and an understanding of the consequences of different choices. Age increases our experience in means of coping.

All four health dimensions of Lifegame should be seen more like overlapping fields than precisely delineated areas. In the everyday situations included in Lifegame each dimension is included with varying degrees of emphasis. The experienced health of an individual, which predicts quite well their future health, may comprise all these dimensions. Researched information is helpful for all dimensions of health but in interpreting we need health literacy.