ABSTRACT
Health care in Europe and North America is practiced by a large number of people and organizations, including physicians, nurses, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, public-health professionals, social workers, chiropractors, homeopaths, acupuncturists, and various ‘holistic’ practitioners. These individuals and groups use a great variety of approaches that are based on different concepts of health and illness. Once the relativity and subjective nature of the concept of health is perceived, it also becomes clear that the experience of health and illness is strongly influenced by the cultural context in which it occurs. What is healthy and sick, normal and abnormal, sane and insane, varies from culture to culture. Moreover, cultural context influences the specific ways people behave when they get sick. Health is really a multidimensional phenomenon involving interdependent physical, psychological, and social aspects. The common representation of health and illness as opposite ends of a one-dimensional continuum is quite misleading.
