“Complete health may be achieved through ways other than, or in
addition to, those focusing on individuals’ patterns of exercise,
eating and smoking,” Joseph G. Grzywacz, Ph.D., of Wake Forest University
School of Medicine and Corey L.M. Keyes, Ph.D., of Emory University. “Social
behaviors have been largely overlooked in health promotion practice,
yet they may hold significant promise for enhancing individual and population
health.”
Their research appears in the current issue of the American
Journal of Health Behavior.
Grzywacz and Keyes analyzed responses from 3,032 adults
who took part in the National Survey of Midlife Development in 1995.
They defined “complete
health” as not just the absence physical or mental disease, but
also enjoying high physical and mental well-being.
The survey asked participants about their health, any restrictions to
daily living and their emotional, psychological and social well-being.
Grzywacz and Keyes included questions on attendance at religious services
or meetings of social or sports organizations.
About 19 percent of the respondents were completely healthy,
while a similar number were in “complete ill health,” Grzywacz
says.
As might be expected, personal health choices paid off.
“More individuals who were completely healthy participated in regular
exercise, maintained a healthy weight and were nonsmokers than incompletely
healthy or completely unhealthy individuals,” Grzywacz says.
Alone, however, these lifestyle approaches were no guarantee of complete
health, he adds. Some people in the intermediate range exercised regularly
but were also mentally unhealthy, suggesting that other circumstances may
have affected their health.
Both the physical and social components of health are
needed for complete health, says Grzywacz. Completely healthy people
differed from completely
unhealthy ones because they both reduced personal risk behaviors — by
exercising or not smoking — and were more involved socially through
religious or civic groups.
“The prevalence of complete ill health was lowest for individuals
who attended church weekly and highest among those who attended rarely
or never,” he says. “Religiousness may promote or maintain
mental health regardless of an individual’s physical health status.”
These social behaviors had effects as strong as the personal ones, he
says, adding that social connectedness not only benefits individual health
but also lays foundations for community health.
The research was supported in part by a grant from the
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and drew in data from
the John D. and
Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Research Network on Successful
Midlife Development.
