Personal Responsibility for Health: Critical Analysis

Personal Health

When one is facing death like Tom Shadyac did you can do anything. Tom Shadyac after a bicycle accident suffered post-concussion syndrome. I think through maintaining personal health is what made Tom overcome the syndrome. First of all, post-concussion syndrome is a complex disorder in which various symptoms such as headaches and dizziness may last for weeks and sometimes months after the injury that caused the concussion. The effects one experiences when suffering from such syndrome can lead to suicidal thoughts.

One can be said to be facing death if he/she is suffering from a terminal disease or illness and after several treatments which failed. Also, if the individual increasing difficulty in doing what they were able to do easily, and their physical symptoms increase as the disease advances (Kyota & Kanda, 2019). When Tom was in this situation, he was forced to re-evaluate his life and he learn that money can’t buy happiness. This made him to sell his big mansion and move to a mobile home community in Malibu.

Understanding our society better can helps in maintaining a personal health. There are certain diseases and illness that are mostly associated with the society we live. Understanding the society, we can avoid or at least try to prevent the illness and the diseases. This is seen in the movie when Tom speaks with intellectual and spiritual leaders about what is wrong with our world and how we can improve both this world and the way we live in it. For instance, there are illness and diseases that are associated with nutrition and environment conditions (Rovesti, et al., 2018). These diseases can be avoided if one practices personal health maintenance or improving in one’s lifestyle.

Maintaining a personal health is amongst personal responsibilities in every one life. This is not to say that if you maintain a good personal health conditions you will not get ill or diseases or you can avoid them. Taking a personal responsibility for health involves a commitment to adopting a health lifestyle, frequent exercise, not smoking, and weight control. While role responsibility in this schema may imply nothing more than one’s role as a biological organism, causal responsibility implicates the individual’s choices and actions with regard to diet, exercise, and so forth in helping to determine his or her health status. Depending upon which interpretation of personal responsibility for health is adopted, one may invoke ethical or even judicial notions of paternalism, general utility, communitarianism, or fairness and compensation to, in turn, inform policy choices regarding health and health promotion and disease prevention.

According to (Minkler, 1999) people who follows personal health habits like eating breakfast, and not smoking have a lower morbidity and mortality rates than those who tend not to follow them. Also, individual who develop their own diet and exercise plans are more successful at achieving and maintaining weight loss than those who play a more passive role. Taking a personal health cover is also essential. I said this because taking a health insurance will generally cover medical expenses, provide coverage against critical illness, offer cashless claim and tax benefits. It also provides additional protection over and above your employer cover. Through this one can live a happy and stress-free life knowing that his/her health is covered and can receive best treatment even if he/she can be able to manage the payment of the treatment. The benefits of maintaining a personal health is of great importance, as one can live longer by just following simple steps one can make and maintain them.

References

1. Kyota, A., & Kanda, K. (2019). How to come to terms with facing death: a qualitative study examining the experiences of patients with terminal Cancer. BMC Palliative Care, 18(33).
2. Minkler, M. (1999). Personal Responsibility for Health? A Review of the Arguments and the Evidence at Century’s End. Health Education & Behavior, 26(1), 121-140.
3. Rovesti, M., Fioranelli, M., Petrelli, P., Satolli, F., Roccia, M. G., Gianfaldoni, S., . . . Lotti, T. (2018). Health and Illness in History, Science and Society. Journal of Medical Sciences, 6(1), 163-165.