Positive Approaches to Health

The aim of this book is to offer the reader a number of different perspectives on health-related interventions. It seeks to go beyond the dominant biomedical perspectives that emphasis disease, diagnosis, cure or management of symptoms/impairments. While this biomedical perspective has been highly successful in managing disease and some of its sequelae, there are many dimensions of human experience that are not effectively touched by this approach. Moreover, the biomedical perspective tends to rely on normative view that sees disease and impairment as an aberration. The perspectives offered in this book are highly diverse, but they have one thing in common. They each discuss a positive approach that aims to enhance health and well being. Moreover, they look beyond the lacks or disfunctions associated with disease and impairment and emphasise instead people''s strength, abilities, and potentials to harness inner motivation, stories, spirit, and hope as well as to be lifted up by creative contexts, literature and other resources of the environment.