The Responsibility Of Individual's Health For Others

Individual's health has some responsibilities for others. These responsibilitieshave been ignored by health education in the past. Now it is the right time to layemphasise on it. This is a new dimension of health promotion.The main ideas of this article include the following. First, we discuss theprecondition of responsibilities between individuals, there is connection betweenindividuals, and we argue the modality of responsibility's connection is psychologicalmutual aid between friends and individuals of same generation; Second, we describethe content of dialogue and communication between individuals, and point out thepreconditions and flaws of the health education and health promotion; Third, weconclude: the responsibility of individual's health for others is the new dimension ofhealth promotion.Along with the development of society, the degree of civilization has becomehigher and higher, and the main points of medicine have also changed. Theresponsibility of individual is strengthened, the freedom of individual is enhanced,and the request of individual expected from society has also grown. In the study ofhealth education, however, many still stay on the level of taking responsibility foroneself on the recognition of individual's health responsibility, lack to explain therelationship between individual's health and others, lack to explain the individual'shealth is responsible for others. Individual's health is responsible for others, is theimportant content of individual's health responsibility. This article assumes that thetheoretical base of connections between individual and other is inter-individual,because the connection between individual and other, is connection betweenindividual and individual. We can discuss responsibility only. on the basis of this kind of connection. On the basis of theory of inter-individual, we discuss the individual'shealth responsibility, and discuss the categorizations of the individual's health responsibility.Only in connection, by intervention, can the responsibility be undertaken orcarried out. There is much interference in reality. Smoke interferes with health. Oneof the scientific evidences of connections between individual's health and other is theharm caused by active smoker to passive smoker. An individual is responsible forother's health on the basis of this kind of connection, and it is a health responsibility.A good connection modality between individual and other is psychological mutual aidbetween friends and individuals of same generation, since the core idea ofinter-individual is dialogue and communication between individual and individual,and psychological mutual aid between friends and same generation is a usefulmodality of dialogue and communication. It will be confident when one consultantswith experts, but it is oppressesed frequently. Psychological mutual aid betweenfriends and individuals of same generation is easy to communicate, but it is bias. So,a healthy individual is needed. The individual must be a healthy individual, a healthysubject.World Health Organization defined health, and gave an ideal definition of health.Then the task of health promotion would be how to build a bridge between the idealand reality.At the present stage, the situation and the problems of health education is theactual request of the individual's health responsibility for others. Now, the policy,faculty, funds, teaching material, courses, agency of health education all seem to havetroubles. The practice of school's health education is biased, many think thatpsychological health education equates health education, political education equatespsychological education. It reflects a misunderstanding about health education andhealth promotion. The core idea of health promotion is empowerment, thecontent of empowermentincludes knowledge, autonomy, self-esteem, self-confidence, and freedom. All thesecontents should be the contents of dialogue and communication. It is exactly bydiscussing these contents, or at least in the form of concept, individual fulfill his/hersresponsibility.Everyone accepts that the health education and Population health strategy arethe two preconditions of the present health education and health promotion. Everyoneaccept change is a kind of oppressing order, the practice of people health strategy alsohas its restriction. While emphasizing the individual's health responsibility for otherscan make up their flaws.Psychological mutual aid between friends and individuals of same generation is akind of equal help, and then there is helping responsibility between individual andindividual. Health promotion emphasizes the empowerment, the responsibility ofgovernment is to make it easier for individual to make healthier decisions, asindividual's decisions are always influenced by friends and individuals of samegenerations. We think, in health education, it is necessary to emphasize about theindividual's health responsibility for others. On the basis of emphasizing theindividual's health responsibility for others, we present the basic mode of healtheducation and health promotion: leading health education, supporting healthpromotion, and mutual-helping health promotion. Mutual-helping health promotion isa new dimension of health promotion, it is a supplement, instead of a replacement.What is new in this paper:1. Propose that individual's health is responsible to others;2. Think that the theoretical basis of the connection between individuals isinter-individual3. Raise that psychological mutual aid between friends and individuals of same generation is the representation of individual's health responsibility forothers.4. Define the individual's health responsibility for others as a new dimension ofhealth promotion.