Well-Being

In 1947, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized that health should not just be defined as the absence of disease. Instead, it chose a more inclusive and affirmative definition—“Health is a positive state of physical, mental, and social well-being.” This recognition has resulted in an increase of clinical, scientific, and public interest in the assessment and treatment of mental illnesses and the assessment and promotion of well-being. This entry defines well-being and discusses the relationship between well-being and obesity and possible mechanisms through which well-being can be enhanced.

Defining Well-Being

Well-being is a state of optimal experience and functioning. Traditionally, well-being has been viewed from two different perspectives: hedonic well-being and eudaimonic well-being. The hedonic perspective views well-being in terms of pleasure attainment and pain avoidance. Hedonic well-being is most commonly assessed by measurements of subjective well-being (SWB): one's cognitive and affective evaluation of one's life. There are four components of SWB: life satisfaction (global judgments of one's life), satisfaction with important domains (e.g., work satisfaction), positive affect (experiencing many pleasant emotions and moods), and low levels of negative affect (experiencing few unpleasant emotions and moods).

The eudaimonic perspective goes beyond the assessment of simple pleasure and pain and views well-being as the extent to which a person is fully functioning, living a life of meaning and self-realization. From the eudaimonic perspective, feeling a complete range of emotional experiences is seen as a positive characteristic of a fully functioning individual. Further, well-being is defined by the degree to which a person embodies such traits as autonomy, personal growth, self-acceptance, life purpose, mastery, and positive relatedness. Whereas hedonic well-being does not necessarily influence eudaimonic well-being in that many pleasurable activities do not produce wellness, the reverse is usually true; engaging in eudaimonic activities increases SWB in terms of positive affect and general life satisfaction.

Well-Being and Obesity

The majority of studies suggest that there is strong link between being overweight and experiencing negative psychological consequences. However, this link is often complex, expressing multiple covariations rather than a single pattern of association. In the case of depression, for example, the relationship between obesity and well-being is dependent upon gender, race, and sex. Further, the connection between obesity and well-being is not a direct one, but is linked through several different pathways including physical health ailments, social stigma and diminished self-concept, and behavior patterns such as physical inactivity.

Well-being has become a major topic in studies of chronic diseases as physical illness is often associated with displeasure and pain and can affect well-being because functional limitations often detract from opportunities to increase positive affect and life satisfaction. Of course, there are several biological reasons for the connection between physical health and well-being, including changes in physiological, biological, and hormonal functioning. However, the moderate correlation between physical health and well-being is complex. Interestingly, the majority of the research suggests that it is perceived physical health rather than actual physical health that predicts SWB (i.e., some people with objectively poor health have high SWB, whereas some people with poor well-being have no physical problems).

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