Conceptualizations of Health and Illness Perspective

Health and illness issues have become major concerns for the last two centuries as more people wish to lead a healthy and long life. Major struggles in the industrial and post-industrial world have been to improve the health standards of its larger human population. The salience on health and illness has resulted in the emergence of the biomedical paradigm in modern times, based upon Western scientific philosophy. The biomedical (also termed biomedicine) paradigm has been successful in surpassing all other traditional health paradigms of health and illness. Its rising success and sheer scale of expansion have evoked counter reactions in many parts of the world, especially in healthcare. The present paper attempts to explore conceptualizations of health and illness through different ages of human history until today. It will examine the underpinnings of dominant health and illness paradigms and their limitations and, finally, explore some alternative paradigms from the health and illness perspective. The emerging health and illness perspective approaches endorse the idea that the complexities of human health and illness need comprehensive understanding. It cannot be arrived at by relying on any single formulation and conception of health and illness or adopting any single epistemological and methodological position. In contemporary times, health and illness conceptualizations embrace pluralism, which considers a given context?s biological, psychosocial, cultural, political, and economic realities shaping health and illness representations.