The Current Concepts of Health: From Quality of Life to Fullness of Life

The article raises the question of the need to supplement modern interpretations of the quality of life with ideas about the fullness of life, reflecting the current social changes to a greater extent. So far, human well-being, articulated as the main goal of social development, is measured by indicators of the quality of life. Among them, health indicators play an important role. They are based on explicit and implicit ideas about what it means to be healthy and sick - the concept of health. Three basic concepts of health were elaborated in the study. The first concept is normative and functional views on health by Talcott Parsons, derived from the description of a balanced, stable society of the mid-20th century with a distinct majority of the middle class, following the requirements of social roles. The second is the concept of healthism, which spread at the turn of the 21st century and considers modern society as a risk society, with the growing individualization and the victory of neo-liberal values. This concept makes individuals be responsible for their own health. The third is a modern understanding of health as an opportunity to live a full life, involving an intense virtual-corporeal experience, which arose in the context of current social changes in the early 21st century. Among these changes, the formation of network and flow structures, alternative to traditional social institutions and leading to the erosion of a single normativity, can be distinguished. A review of the most common health indicators used by Russian research companies in the calculation of the quality of life leads to the conclusion that the transformations in the understanding of health and disease are not taken into account in them, which requires the development of a new understanding of well-being. In the light of current trends, it is not the quality of life, but its fullness, showing how intensely, fully, richly a person can live. In relation to the sphere of health, it is proposed to consider indicators of the fullness of life that reflect the involvement in networks of social interactions. The indicators include, for example, the number of social contacts, communicative inclusion in social networks and sharing, the presence of significant support groups. Further conceptualization of ideas about the fullness of life and the development of appropriate empirical indicators to diagnose its manifestations are important research tasks.

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