As If Your Life Depended on It: Promoting Cognitive Development to Promote Wellness

Abstract

In this article the authors discuss key elements of the cognitive‐developmental perspective and the need to integrate it as an important component of the wellness model. Each speaks to the personal empowerment of every person to live a rewarding and responsible life. Each also emphasizes the ongoing promotion of growth rather than secondary prevention or remediation.

Experiencing Festival Bodies: Connecting Massage and Wellness

“…Through these active interventions, the corporeal becomes the 'ultimate value' in a society of consumers, and its 'well-being is the foremost object of all and any life-pursuits' (Bauman 2005: 91). Here may lie the impetus for the increasing number of individuals who choose to engage with corporeal practices in order to create a holistic state of wellness (taking into account intellectual, physical, social, emotional, occupational, and spiritual aspects (Hatfield and Hatfield 1992). In interrogating the ways in which the body is constructed as the 'ultimate value' (in economic terms a 'potentially inexhaustible source of profits' (Bauman 2005: 91), this paper looks at the ways in which the biomedical constructions of the body as a 'pure object of science' (Parr 2002: 243) 1 might be questioned experientially through the practices of massage.…”

A framework for health promotion services for people with psychiatric disabilities.

“…For example, within public health the concept of wellness was initially defined by Dunn (1961) as “an integrated method of functioning which is oriented toward maximizing the potential of which the individual is capable” (p. 4). In addition, the active ongoing nature of the wellness process emphasizes a commitment to lifestyle choices that empower the individual for productive community participation (Cadell, Karabanow & Sanchez, 2001; Hatfield & Hatfield, 1992). The Ottawa Charter for health promotion, one of the seminal documents that serves as a foundation of the field, frames health as a resource which enables people to function in their environments and to lead individually, socially, and economically productive lives (WHO, 1986), or in the language of mental health, enables people to recover.…”

The Function of Meaning and Purpose for Individual Wellness

“…For example, meaning can help inspire a sense of personal values (Westgate, 1996). Several authors have pointed out the existence of reciprocal influences between an individual's belief system and his or her sense of meaning (Hatfield & Hatfield, 1992;Suyemoto & MacDonald, 1996;Westgate, 1996). An individual's belief system can influence and enhance the sense of meaning, while simultaneously an individual's sense of meaning may guide the person toward adopting a certain belief.…”