PERSONALITY

Personality, health and illness

Personality, health and illness

Thesis statement

“Personality helps to determine the degree to which an individual leads a healthy life of suffers from illnesses”.

Introduction

In this world, since the day of it existence, billions of people had born having different thoughts, attitudes and behaviours. These people have been residing in societies under similar circumstances and external factors. However, the way they respond to the external environment varies. This variation in response is mainly due to the different kinds of personalities they hold. Some people are very reserved while some are very outspoken, some tend to be cheerful round the clock while some are anxious, some are very anger while some are cool minded. These variations in personalities affect the physical and mental health of people. Hence, people living in the same external environment may be confronted with differing health issues.

Health-clarification of the by World Health Organisation

Health is usually explained as the absence of disease or illness. The concept does not only refer to the physical health of an individual but also includes the psychological health, as well as the social wellbeing of an individual. The most widely accepted definition of health has been given by the World Health Organisation as, “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. Many psychological factors affect health of an individual. Among these factors, personality is an important one. Personality can be described as stable differences among individual thinking, behaving and feeling. The connection between personality and health can be explained by the example that an individual who possesses an increased sense of coherence is likely to experience less stress and consider the world as manageable as compared to others, ensuring good health (Williams et al., 2009, 783). Moreover, apart from the differences in personalities that individuals have, differences in attitudes they hold towards their health, and also the way they consider their illness are also important factors that determine the degree of health and illness for various people.

Personality and health

It is accepted that the personality traits held by a person affect his health and well being; it has been found that, it is complex to establish a true relation between the health of an individual and the personality traits held by him. This phenomenon includes measurement, the difference between symptoms reported subjectively and objective symbols of illness, and the course of causes (Matthews et al., 2003, p. 96). Suls and Ritterhouse (1990) identified four ways by which; personality health status can be linked. The first assumption is a strong one and emphasises upon the importance that personality traits hold. According to this assumption, outcomes of different illnesses are due to differences in biology. The second assumption is about the relationship between illness and personality traits. It is considered to be co relational rather than casual. The third assumption was regarding the probability that various personality traits lead to behaviour affecting the health adversely, causing illnesses and can be described as the habit ...