Wellness to be a person's ability to pursue their goals and flourish despite their
circumstances. A person's motivation to thrive both physically and mentally as they navigate
the world around them. I correlated it with people's habits and how habits are closely related
to welfare. Through this course, I learned a person's quality of life is dependent on how they
can incorporate the Eight Dimensions of Wellness; the emotional, environmental, financial,
intellectual, occupational, social, and spiritual in their life (Garcia, 2015). I was able to
identify that it is related to people being motivated by five basic needs: physiological,
safety, love, esteem, and self-actualization; Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (Woodside &
McClam, 2019). After analyzing health through the four educational lenses; the historical,
humanities, social, and natural science lens, it is clear that health is influenced by the world a
person lives in, their circumstances, culture, background, their community, socioeconomic
status, science, technology, and more.
When discussing the future, the implications of wellness can stem from various
areas. In particular, one area that is always a concern is economic stress and its impact on
wellness. When analyzing this matter, one can use the four educative lenses to study events
like the Great Depression, the economic crisis of 2007 and 2008, and the COVID-19
pandemic. The American Psychological Association performed a study to investigate the
role of county-level population health determinants in predicting individual employee
reactions to economic stress by studying the impact of the economic crisis of 2007 and 2008
(Probst et al., 2018). Studies such as these are critical analyses using various educative
lenses to learn the impact of events and how they affect people and society as a whole. The
studies provide us with solutions we can use to apply to the present world and future.
The critical analysis skills I have acquired in this course will support me going
forward in my personal, academic, and professional life in the sense when issues arise, I will
be empowered to examine them from different perspectives. For example, I plan to get a job
in the healthcare administration field. In this field, professionals are confronted with various
issues as they work with people and patients from different cultural, ethnic, and racial
backgrounds. "Wellness means different things to different stakeholders so that it becomes
viewed as an uncontroverted good (Kirkland, 2014). Everyone has a different lived
experience, no two are alike. Thus, one has to be open-minded, curious versus judgmental to
get an understanding of how diversity may impact organizational structure and patient
outcomes. Being able to take a situation and examine it to learn from it is important to make
better connections with people.
References
Garcia, C. (2015). What are the Eight Dimensions of Wellness in Your Life? Colorado
Nurse, 115(1), 6. Retrieved from https://search-ebscohost-
com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=103763107&site=eds
-live&scope=site
Kirkland. A. (2014, October). What Is Wellness Now? J Health Polit Policy Law 1; 39 (5):
957–970. Retrieved from: https://doi-org.ezproxy.snhu.edu/10.1215/03616878-
2813647
Probst, T. M., Sinclair, R. R., Sears, L. E., Gailey, N. J., Black, K. J., & Cheung, J. H.
(2018). Economic stress and well-being: Does population health context matter? The
Journal of applied psychology, 103(9), 959–979.
https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000309
Woodside, M. R., & McClam, T. (2019). An introduction to human services (9th Edition).
Cengage Learning US. Retrieved from:
https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/books/9781337671262
