Spiritual_Wellness_Holistic_Health_and_the_Practic

202 Philosophical Foundations of Health Education
program, and so on) chooses to smoke cigarettes but has made that decision freely, the
health educator has been successful.
This model is more democratic than the one many health educators have adopted.
It does not entail programming clients to behave in predetermined ways that have been
defined as “ healthy, ” but rather attempts to eliminate or diminish the factors which
influence the client ’ s behavior so as to allow him or her to freely choose health - related
behaviors consistent with his or her values, needs, etc. This model is a move away
from the 1984 syndrome of operant conditioning and a push toward a more collaborative
type of health education between educator and client.
Someone once said, “ Give me a fish and I eat today, but teach me to fish and I can
eat forever. ” Similarly, health education that teaches people the decision - making process
will be more valuable than health education that tells people how to behave. In
many instances, health scientists are not even sure which behaviors are healthy or
unhealthy. For example, though there is sufficient evidence to conclude that serum
cholesterol is related to coronary heart disease, the relationship between ingested cholesterol
and serum cholesterol has not been agreed upon. Yet health educators teach
people to lower ingested cholesterol, rather than present the debate surrounding this
issue and let people decide for themselves whether or not reducing cholesterol makes
sense to them. As Toffler (1971) and Pirsig (1974) have written, knowledge is expanding
rapidly. The facts of today too often become the myths of tomorrow. The healthy
behaviors that health educators program people to adopt today may become the
unhealthy behaviors of tomorrow (swine flu inoculations?). Rather than training people
to behave in pre - determined ways, let ’ s teach them to analyze issues freely and
decide for themselves how to behave.
Another aspect of this concept pertains to the relationship of mental, social, and
spiritual health to physical health. Too often in determining which behaviors are
“healthy, ” health educators emphasize the quantity of life to the detriment of the quality
of life. Mortality and morbidity become the mainstays rather than happiness and comfort.
Physical health is adopted as the objective often to the exclusion, or at least the de -
emphasis, of mental, social, and spiritual health. Greene (1971) writes of this issue:
A businessman might be fifteen pounds overweight for no apparent reason other
than careless eating habits, an unawareness of the advantages of a trim physique,
and ignorance of the basic principles of weight control. This should be classed as a
remedial health defect and one important indicator of reduced health status.
However, let us compare this case with the case of another businessman, equally
overweight, who happens to be a well - informed and enthusiastic amateur gourmet.
His library of cookbooks includes directions for preparing many of the most popular
dishes of other cultures. He spends many interesting hours in offbeat markets shopping
for hard - to - get food items. The meals he prepares constitute focal points of an
interesting and satisfying social life. This man realizes he is overweight; he knows
how to reduce and control his weight, and he may even suspect that his coronary
may arrive a year or two ahead of schedule, but he does not care. His overweight