Well being - the wellness dilemma

In this sense, it is a normative concept: it means that a person's well-being is what that person reasonably desires. If a person is unreasonable, this fact may diminish, but it does not eliminate, the person's well-being. When the concept is applied to the lives of human beings, it is often used in a comparative way, for example: "A is better off than B," or "A's life is more complete than B's." This approach is used in utilitarian approaches to ethics, in the theory of hedonistic utilitarianism. In such approaches, the way to improve the world is to maximize the total amount of well-being, although some forms of utilitarianism, such as that of John Stuart Mill, require that the well-being of all sentient creatures, not just humans, should be maximized. In hedonistic utilitarianism, it is the total amount of well-being that matters. This concept is closely linked to the concepts of preference, desire, and pleasure in decision theory, and to the concept of utility in microeconomics. The concept of well-being can also be used in a non-comparative way, in which case it means more or less the same thing as "flourishing" or "fulfillment". This is more common in non-utilitarian moral theories, such as those of Kant and Aristotle. In this view, it is possible to have a high degree of well-being without being especially happy, if one's life is still lacking in some important way. In the philosophy of positive psychology, the term well-being is used to describe a person's flourishing. In this approach, well-being is described as the successful performance of the self in the domains of relationships, work, and recreation. At present, the colloquial use of the term "wellness" has no precise definition. When used in relation to a person, it refers to that person's health, appearance and overall well-being. In some contexts, especially in healthcare and insurance, wellness is used to refer to a person's level of health. There is generally a distinction in the concept of wellness between physical health and mental health. In the context of healthcare, it is more often to mean "physical well-being" than "psychological well-being".