What are Social Determinants? How social determinants and health are interlinked? Why mental health is important?
One of the fundamental concerns of the current advanced civilization is to deal with the health status globally. In the 21st century with the expansion in technology, the person mental and physical health is going into danger gradually. Social determinants play a crucial role in sustaining a good mental and physical health status among peoples. Before elaborating the social determinants mental and physical health status, it is important to define health in social context.
Health status refers to a person’s mental, physical, social and emotional well-being. The people are living a mechanical life, and the physical activities are decreasing day by day. Consequently, people spend more time in obsession, automatic negative thought or preoccupied thinking leading not merely a wide range of mental distresses or mental health issues and disorders but physical suffering as well.
Social determinants cover the wide range of factors that play a significant role in promoting mental or physical health status among people considering the psychological needs of human. The social determinants of mental and physical health status evaluate the health status in social contexts, conceptualizes that high and low mental and physical fitness emerges from the interaction between an individual and their environments. The social determinants of health are people work and environment-oriented such as psychosocial, cultural, and material conditions.
The chief social determinants of mental and physical health status comprised of two categories the physical or social and psychological needs. The physiological or social model of health consist of the environmental services and goods such as water and food; employment & social security, the living standards, lifestyle factors, accessibility to health care; transport and working conditions. The psychological model of health covers the safety, self-esteem, love, affection, belongingness, diagnose prognoses, prevent and treat health problems. Different theories better explain the role of social determinants in the development of mental and physical health status. The functional theory explains the behavioral obligation and causes the function of particular behaviors. The social conflict theories provide in-depth information about the societal inequities that consider being very alarming for the mental and physical health status of the individual.
Functional Theory
Functionalism provides an extensive framework that describes that the lifestyles and health relate behaviors plays a crucial role in the development of health status. According to functional theory, people follow the sedentary lifestyle due to multiple factors that severely affect their health status. To avoid the responsibilities of their life, they pose themselves week and sick, and start taking advantage. The sick role helps them spending a comfortable life, and they prolong such behavior, as a result of their miserable lifestyle their mental and physical health deteriorates. The lack of parental support, poor parenting involvement, parenting styles, and parenting practices affect the mental as well as physical health status. The poor mental health is positively associated with a poor physical condition. The poor parenting develops low self-esteem, anxieties, negative self-concept among people not merely in childhood, but also in adulthood as well. These psychological suffering further leads to physical diseases such as brain function deficits, dementia, and weight issues as well.Conflict Theory
Conflict theory addresses the social compositions that create social inequalities through prejudice, discriminations, conflicts and fundamental thinking that cause the barrier to receiving social advantages. In the healthcare setting, academic institution, employment opportunities, and other areas of life the discrimination inhibit the progression of health status. For example, if a person does not receive adequate medical facilities at a health care center or hospital due to socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, prejudice or other related factors, his physical health status may worsen. The poor physical condition further leads to psychological suffering as well such as the person, preoccupied thinking, and anxieties.Similarly, in academic institutes, the students encounter racism that adversely affects their mental health status and causes low self-esteem. In Latin America, the black African children do not receive equal facilities as compared to White American student. The Black African student has no right to become the monitor of the class. Literature revealed that significantly the people belong to disadvantaged social backgrounds are more vulnerable to acquire the illness, and once they do become sick, insufficient and inadequate health care makes the recovery of the patient more difficult. Literacy is another essential component of the mental and physical health status of the people. The illiterate people indicate poor understanding for comprehending the difference between medical and psychological symptoms and consultation for care services. Generally all kind of health problem seen as medical problems and ignores the psychological consultation for the maintenance of good health status. For example, the diagnosis of ADHD, or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder used to be treated medically. People still consider the ADHD as a medical disease and consult the physician instead of clinical psychologists. In the past decades, the child with ADHD t would have been considered merely overly active. The physician used to prescribe, a drug Ritalin to reduce hyperactive symptoms. The ADHD as a medical problem believed to be rewarding for physicians and the Ritalin manufacturing company, and they ignore the possible social roots causes of their behavior such as stultifying schools, inadequate parenting, and gender discrimination, as some study reveals that hyperactive kids assessed to be boys.
Similarly, the patients of the eating disorder usually seek help from a physician rather than a psychologist, psychiatrist, or another health-care professional due to lack of awareness. Although the etiology and treatment of Eating Disorder is purely society and counseling oriented the people take it as a medical term. According to a study, the causes of Eating Disorders are exclusively due to the social standard of beauty.
In short, the social determinants of mental and physical health are imperative to understand to manage the hindrances and gaps in society. The physical and mental health can only be promoted if the social determinant evaluated profoundly and according to the cultural context. the public awarness should be promoted through mental health awareness, quotes, layman dentition of mental health, mental health counselors and mental health flyers.