THE NEED OF HOLISTIC HEALTH CARE IN SOCIETY

Now a day‟s all type of Holistic treatments are put under the name of holistic health care. Hence people get confused what is really holistic health care. However holistic health care is a very vast subject. If you get into the internet, every special treatment is clubbed into Holistic Health care. But the word Holistic Health Care has a different meaning. The word health is derived from old English word hal meaning hale, whole, healed etc. Thus appropriate approach toward health ought to become Wholestic (Holistic). In this contest only this field work has been taken up. The pendulum of health concept has swung from absence of disease to physical, mental and social well-being of a person in WHO conference held in Alma Ata in 1978. In this field project only mental health is being investigated to find out what is mental health and the lack of mental health, how it is going to affected the personal life, family life and social life of a person. John Last (1987) defines health as a state of equilibrium between humans and the physical, biological and social environment. He further adds that we can never be described as healthy so long as our actions whether deliberately or unwittingly, continue to be damage other humans or fragile eco systems with which we are interdependent. Richard Hetzel, the President of Whole Health Institute, Australia, in his definition of health includes positive, peaceful, caring attitudes expressed towards the people and circumstances around us. The changing definition of health also calls for the transformation of approach in the treatment offered to the patients as Richard Hetzel puts: “In considering the philosophy and the principles, understanding the practice of medicine, I will first of all define medicine as the art and science of the prevention and treatment of disease”. Late Dr. Machael Balient an internationally renowned Psychoanalyst describes the value of the doctor‟s personality in his book, “The Doctor, His Patient and The Illness” in the following words: “By far the most frequently medicine in medical practice was the doctor himself. It was not only the bottle of medicine or the box of pills that mattered, but the way the doctor gave to the patients. In fact, the whole atmosphere in which the drug was given and taken.”