Looking at Mr. Singh social situation, his social assessment reveals that he is a cigarette smoker, unemployed in the last two years, lives alone and separated from his ex-wife and two adult children. According to NHS Choices (2012), smoking is a main risk factor of cardiovascular disease thus carbon monoxide and nicotine from cigarette strains the heart and makes it work faster increasing risk of blood clots leading to early death. Furthermore, the Health.Com (2014) stated that people who do not have a strong network of friends and family are at a very great risk of having and dying from heart disease thus they are likely to drink more, smoke, and get little or no exercise. Therefore loneliness has made Mr Singh’s socioeconomic and psychosocial problems to be more complex. Therefore the bio-psychosocial aspect of Mr. Singh reveals that he is not having a good quality of life due to his financial problem, unemployment, emotionally distress and isolated social life. According to the King’s Fund (2010), some of the causes of cardiovascular diseases, multiple LTC, diabetes and hypertension are due to poorer quality of life such as smoking. This an high risk situation for Mr. Singh as such a high-risk situation is any circumstance which causes a danger to an individual’s sense of direct and enhances the risk of possible lapse or relapse ( ). Therefore high risk situations are manageable through the development of appropriate cognitive and behavioural coping response.
At the psychological level, stressful and poor working conditions can cause continuing feelings of humiliation, insecurity and worthlessness. Not having a secure understanding of the future can cause large amounts of anxiety and futility that roots high levels of fatigue from day-to-day life, therefore making everyday coping difficult. Individuals who experience high levels of prolonged stress often attempt to relieve these pressures by adopting unhealthy coping behaviours; for example, the excessive use of alcohol, smoking, and
In simple terms, an individual’s health very much depends on factors which are out of their control. While these factors are highly numbered, I will discuss the most influential aspects which affect our overall health. Various studies have documented the certain relationship between these social determinants of health and it has been evaluated and continuously studied over the years.
“The social determinants of health are the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life” (World Health Organisation (WHO), 2009). The social determinants of health can be divided into 5 categories, age, sex and hereditary factors, individual lifestyle factors, social and community networks, living and working conditions and general socioeconomic, cultural and
Josh et al (2000) suggested that Social Capital was an important explanation regarding health issues. Supporting the theory that life chances are influenced by social environment and the people around us (Holborn, Burrage and Langley, 2009).
According to Dennis Raphael, the conditions that overcome lifestyle activities such as daily smoking, physical activity, and eating habits are living and working conditions an individual endures daily (2016). In Canada, and in many countries just like it, focuses a lot on the biomedical approach which looks at treatment of disease, rather than prevention and the behavioural approach that is every individualized and its main target is to prevent disease through cultivating a lifestyle that encourages activities that work towards it (Raphael, 2016). These approaches aren’t the most effective because people continue to deteriorate as they require to work multiple precarious jobs that have a very poor condition and still not being able to live their fullest potential due to several barriers such as low wages (Raphael, 2016). This has a lot to do with how a society distributes social and economic resources among its citizens which shape the overall health and well-being of these people (Raphael, 2016). The chapter presents various frameworks that correlate with each other to influence health outcomes which all have a lot in common (Raphael, 2016). Such as the materialist framework discusses how the social determinants of health impact individual’s health outcomes by looking at
Norma James is a 65 years old widow who lives alone. Mrs. James has a medical history of Type 2 diabetes mellitus and hypertension and has also been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation. Mrs. James has been a smoker since her 20s and smokes about a ½ pack of cigarettes per day. She has two adult sons who lives far and has minimum contact with them. She does not work and has a very limited savings. She relies on Old Age Security Benefits for income. She has been living in the same neighbourhood for years but has only few individuals who she considers friends. She prefers to spend her time alone at home watching television, reading or watching over her six cats.
The social determinants of health are arguably more important than the biological determinants of health in determining what the health of an individual will look like through their lifetime. There are many social determinants of health such as culture, disability, income, education and social environment but these detrainments do not impact a person’s life individually. Social determinants do not work in isolation rather they indicate that a number of factors and or determinants of heath determine the health and the quality of life of individuals; in Richard Wagmese’s Ragged Company, social environments and culture are two social determinants of health that work off
David has been chosen as the case scenario in this article. David is a 38-year old single man, he has been working in an investment bank as a financial worker for 8 years with stable financial income. However, he was stressful on maintaining his job performance since he had been appraised as one of top financial investment planner of the bank in previous two years. He started to take cannabis, cocaine and alcohol under peer influence and he found it useful to relief his stress. After taking those drugs and alcohol, he could experience ‘high’ feelings and he would have casual and unprotected sex under the feeling. Now he decided to deal with his substance use problem as the withdrawal symptoms appeared. In David’s case, his problem of substance use will be mainly discussed.
Although I believe I am living a normal life, after analyzing the answers to the survey’s questions I conclude there is always time to change my habits. On a personal scale I am very optimistic, almost stress free, protective of my well being, and active. However, I rarely visit the doctors and almost never pay attention to miniscule conditions in my body that may cause harm to me in the future. After reading and analyzing the articles assigned to me, I have found several courses of action to try.
For instance, risk factors for hypertension includes an unhealthy diet, excessive alcohol drinking, lack of exercise, presence of stress, cigarette smoking, aging, and having African, South Asian, and Aboriginal descent. Meanwhile, diabetes is caused by old age (over age), overweight, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. For erectile dysfunction, simultaneous factors are at play, such as mental (stress and anxiety), lifestyle (smoking tobacco and alcohol drinking), and physical (hypertension and diabetes). Mental condition such as depression are caused by genetics, childhood factors, stress and physical illness. Lastly, the campaign also highlighted stress as part of everyday life and excessive stress can be detected by increase in heart rate and blood pressure, muscle tension, poor concentration, irritability, and sleep problems. These risk factors are incorporated to the campaign’s health assessment tool, called YouCheck, to give respondents an idea of where they stand in terms of their health status and provide tips on how their health can be
Max is a 26 year old male who works at a auto parts factory. He is the sole provider of the family and is now struggling financially. Due to this it has caused a lot of stress in Max’s life. The purpose of this paper is to Identify the risk and resilience factors in Max’s life, describe the factors that put Max at risk for stress and disease and what helps him cope, and why those factors relate to stress, disease, or coping.
Meaning, running studies through the neuro-endocrine, cardiovascular and immune systems for determine how individuals stimulate from chronic low levels of stress. For example, changes in cortisol, cholesterol levels, blood pressure and inflammation. Furthermore, both health-damaging behaviours and violence, for example, may be survival strategies in the face of multiple problems, anger and despair related to occupational insecurity, poverty, debt, poor housing, exclusion and other indicators of low status. These problems impact of individuals social wellbeing and care for others and there selves. Research shows that, in the United Kingdom (UK), 20%-25% of people who are obese or continue to smoke are concentrated among the 26% of the population living in poverty. Additionally, this population are also know with the highest prevalence of anxiety and depression.
“Healthy individuals cannot survive when society is sick.” On the other hand, aspects of social structure influence health and illness. Social factors not only affect life expectancy, but the possibilities the one will experience diseases and in turn, the health care that they will receive.
Studies of mortality, which included social relationships as a metric, determined social relationships have a significant causal relationship to mortality. (Holt-Lunstad, Smith & Layton, 2010) More studies have been done on social relationships however; the mechanisms of how social relationships affect our health are still unclear. (2010) Relationships and their effect on health status continue to be an important area of research and analysis. Social relationships are a determinant which can be addressed at a community level. One key principle outlined by the Commission of European Communities report was not just looking at mortality rates, but also focusing on the quality of life during the
First of all, as I have been mentioned at the last paragraph ,the use of high technology also contribute to the feeling of loneliness and less contact with others. For example, the more use of Internet and TV, the less participation in communication with family members and others (Robert et al. 1998, p. 1017). Moreover, according to Moody (2001, p. 393) using internet with high frequency is related to high levels of emotional loneliness and the use of internet can decrease social well-being. Second, lack of physical activity and sedentary lifestyle may lead to dissatisfaction of life and suicide. It is a truth that most of western individuals prefer sitting in their house and enjoying the sedentary lifestyle. For instance, according to Jepsen et al. (2013, p. 10), by the study of 51 invited obese patients, the conclusion is that physical activity has a close relation to life satisfaction. Furthermore, because a sedentary lifestyle can make people overweight, which may bring about discrimination and suicide. For instance, in American culture, people tend to focus on their body size and weight, so by analyzing a wide range of students with different races and different social background, Eisenberg et al. (2003, p.733, 736) point out that laughing at overweight people may make them feel dissatisfied with themselves and depressed deeply and have high tendency of committing suicide. In addition, obesity is in connection with higher