A modern approach to total wellbeing

Abstract

The events of the last decades have impacted our lives and our health significantly. We expected that the technology boom will improve our lives. While this may be true in a specific context, generally speaking our societies are suffering from moral decays, terrorism fears, wars, financial crisis and unpredictable acts of nature that are increasing in frequency and in intensity. The complex nature of the world we live is impacting our health and wellbeing considerably. Our health is not only determined by our physical health but is the end product of the interplay of the physical, mental, emotional, financial, relational and spiritual events of a lifetime. In this paper we develop a framework that will help us define and measure total wellbeing of individuals in our volatile societies. This framework will help us better understand the complex nature of total wellbeing and develop effective prevention and intervention strategies. © 2009 ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.