I'm getting used for some years with a concept of health other than that I knew that I had been taught. As early as 1986, the Ottawa Charter of the World Health Organization emphasized a new vision of health and its promotion, I must admit that only in recent years have managed to 'digest' and make this my learning. Really seems that personal experience and working, most of the theory, helped me to fully understand what health, what the finely balanced to move our choices, those who say we are doing for our own good, because there ' feel-good '.
For some time I work with a Regional Center, which occupies Prevention and Health Promotion. When the classes of primary and secondary school students sit in classrooms of the Center and look at me and my colleagues, waiting for a lecture in which they expect to be explained to them what is right and what is wrong, I remember the great confusion that I had on when I was their age and I wanted to be driven more often and rely on someone to give me the right answers. Today I know that there are none, that there is a right or a wrong that there are so absolute and abstract, I know that there is a relation to a given situation and my feeling with respect to it, the value that I attach and the choice that I will merit I really hope the right one for me. The approach of the Centre
displaces the boys, usually in a positive way, when we offer them to operators to get involved, to tell them what they know, what they saw, what they think. Many remain silent a long time, seem more than embarrassed, just unaccustomed to taking the initiative, or rather, to be given the right to take and when it comes to lifestyle, it's hard not to talk about personal choices and actions, knowing responsible.
Why is it difficult to work on prevention? Why it is difficult to convey to people who are young or mature, knowing that they can really play a role influence on their well-being, not only today but also for the future? How come most of the time you end up with not drinking alcohol for fear that the same evening will be disqualified and not for the awareness that it is a substance that carries risks for the body, which deeply affects the way we stand with others and ourselves? Why do not happen to think like a daily activity like putting two teaspoons of sugar in coffee port, at year end, to have taken more of a barrel of sugar, into a society devoured by diseases such as diabetes or cancer, which are related mode of intake of this food? Why being overweight or obesity are Increasing trend in our country when the latter species, is related to a high number of diseases, from cardiovascular to those cancer?
My feeling is that it is hard to say that we think about our health, perhaps because we were not too used to it. For years we have experienced professionals recognized with numerous diplomas on the walls of their studies. It is almost as easy to rely on them when you are sick, but they can not intervene where the trouble starts, where we choose for ourselves, often without even realize, or advising or making following the trail left by others.
This condition, which does not consider only related to the adolescent period, but I feel fairly widespread among friends, peers, colleagues, reminds me of a concept that scares me deeply, that experience impotence of Seligman and Maier. It is the certainty of being powerless over their own health and well-being, that certainty of not having control over their health and therefore, not be primarily responsible. The learned helplessness is not generally aware something is perceived by the person rather than as a matter of fact, is connected to a passive attitude towards the facts of life, before which the individual is not confident of being able to change the course of things their actions to external factors, and recognizes the leading role in monitoring and determine the outcome of a given situation. I want to do here is an example: with secondary school children I often use role-playing, which is a tool that can trigger deep emotional responses and to make the current conflicts are in play in certain situations. Speaking of alcohol, for example, propose that the boys stage a typical situation, in which a boy, who had promised the parents not to drink alcohol, thus earning their trust, once you get the group of friends, struggling to keep faith with promise. During the considerations on the represented scene impressed me very much that, in most cases, are friends and the boy's parents to be held accountable for his conduct, first, because they have tried, and insisting mocking, almost 'forcing it' to drink, the latter because they left out of home and because they trusted him. The boy is almost always seen as the helpless victim.
This view of things puzzle me and brings me back to my theme of health, a concept that so varied and so difficult for many to connect, not just absence of disease, but to a dimension of balance and well-being felt that, in addition to being physical, is also a psychological, relational, and why not spiritual. I think that very often the last three dimensions, certainly the last two, are not considered, which are not sufficiently aware of most of the time. As if a need, a driving force is not aware of any .... well then .... usually is out of control, acting alone and the delicate balance is lost, I think it is impossible to pursue their own health if he Ignore the components.
Through this work experience, I realize to what we need to facilitate awareness of the needs and requirements and to facilitate the learning of how the various facets of health are highly interrelated. Promoting health I mean just that, allow each person to exercise greater control over their health and strengthen his faith in order to improve it.
I am convinced that where the individual is recognized ability to exert a decisive influence on their body, their environment, relationships and society, he can get in a conscious way to their personal resources and pursue their own welfare in a functional way. However, if such awareness is lacking, he is likely to depend completely from the other, experts who are experienced or not, in his relationship with his own body in relationship with others and with himself, forgetting that their resources, their skills and unlearning listening to themselves, perhaps without even realizing it.
This possibility is very depressing.
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