Describe Current Patterns of Ill - Health and How They Are Monitored (p3)

Describe current patterns of ill – health and how they are monitored (P3)

Ill health has different concepts to every individual and is interpreted in different ways with different meanings and understandings. The way people see ill health depends on a range of factors; if they have been seriously ill beforehand, how much they know about illness and how they would categorize "severe" or "mild" illnesses. There are a variety of concepts for ill health: ill health as a sensation of illness, ill health as disease symptoms or ill health as a bodily disorder.

The first concept is ill health as disease symptoms; most individuals associate this with vomiting, diarrhoea, pain or visible symptoms such as rashes or lumps on the skin. This concept is more common with people, because it's what the individual feels, rather than what they are diagnosed with. This is a beneficial concept because people, who notice their symptoms quickly, tend to seek medical advice more readily. However, some people become fixated with this concept and can develop hypochondria, and start to panic over mild symptoms.

The second concept is ill health as a sensation of an illness. This is when an individual feels ill or unwell. Individuals have a feeling of discomfort or uneasiness; this is when the individual has symptoms which you cannot see such as fatigue, depression, or being exhausted.

The final concept of ill health is a bodily disorder, this is often related to serious and life threatening diseases such as heart disease, brain tumours or cancer.

Monitoring ill health is a process of keeping track of events which take place. For example, monitoring a patient who is diabetic needs regular doses of insulin to maintain their blood sugar levels, professionals who come in to contact with the individual need to keep a record of the individual, they can do this by creating and observatory chart. Evaluating this chart lets the professionals know how successful the treatment is or if the individual is not making any progress. This could mean there may be underlying symptoms of ill health which have not been diagnosed yet. At the same time the patient can be monitored and evaluated.

Tackling Health Inequalities: A program for action (2003)

Reducing health inequalities has set targets to achieve the national health inequalities so that this program can help to minimize the gap in infant mortality across the different social classes, the gap in life expectancy across local authority areas, as well as addressing the causes of ill health. The main key themes in this program are: supporting families, engaging communities and individuals, preventing illnesses and providing effective treatment and care and addressing the underlying factors of health. These include: employment, housing, skills, equality, environment, transport, food,