Health, wellbeing and disease: overview

This section includes information describing the health status of the Scottish population and at present focuses on the burden of disease from various causes. In the future we plan to add more material on health and well-being.

Health and wellbeing

The World Health Organisation definition of health is :

"a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity"

so health and wellbeing are often used synonymously. Health and wellbeing can be described in terms of function (physical, mental and social) and feeling (physical, mental and social). When there is an impairment of function (which may or may not be the related to active on-going disease), this can be termed disability.

Disease

Although health is defined as 'not merely the absence of disease', available information often relates to disease. One definition of disease is:

"a definite pathologic process with a characteristic set of signs and symptoms. It may affect the whole body or any of its parts, and its etiology, pathology, and prognosis may be known or unknown."

We have focussed on conditions that account for a major proportion of the burden of disease in Scotland, such as coronary heart disease, stroke and cancers such as breast cancer. We have also included conditions that have important impacts on population health, but where it may be difficult to find information, or where there is a need to highlight significant information gaps. Examples include allergic conditions, disability, epilepsy, mental health and multiple sclerosis.

Diseases can be classified by the mechanism by which they are caused: such as an infectious agent in the case of hepatitis C, or uncontrolled proliferation of cells as a result of incompletely understood genetic or environmental factors in the case of cancer.  An alternative way of defining a disease is based on the part of the body usually affected. For example cardiovascular diseases affect the heart and other parts of the circulatory system. Coronary heart disease involves the narrowing and blockage of arteries supplying the heart. Stroke involves the blockage or leakage of arteries in the brain.

Multiple sclerosis involves the development of hardened plaques within the brain and other parts of the nervous system. Epilepsy also affects the central nervous system and is defined by a propensity to seizure with or without any identifiable structural problem.

Mental illness typically involves difficulty in psychological functioning. The underlying brain disorder is more clearly understood in some conditions (such as schizophrenia, mania or severe depression) than others. Suicide is often considered as a mental health issue and is sometimes associated with mental illness such as depression.