Health and Illness from a Phenomenological Perspective

Over the past decades, the development of medical technology and economic concerns, as well as the expansion of health specialization, causes the dehumanizing of this field. This has led to the neglect of the effect of psychological and environmental aspects on the patient during treatment, and the health staff only pays attention to the patient's biological body, which led to their misbehavior with the patient. To solve their problems, health care professionals have resorted to various philosophical schools, such as phenomenology. Phenomenology, with its various doctrines, such as in bracketing of presuppositions and prejudices, allows us to describe reality as it appears to us. Undoubtedly, one of the realities we face in our daily lives is health and illness. While in the field of modern medicine, illness is defined as the dysfunctioning of organs and systems of the body and health as the lack of these disorders, Emphasizing the lived experience of individuals, phenomenology makes it possible to reveal psychological and environmental aspects of illness and health. Paying attention to these aspects of illness and health changes the meaning of illness and health. According to these phenomenological meanings, the illness is no longer limited to the patient's biological body, but his body is considered as a lived body, a body with different dimensions of existence, each of which can have a significant impact in his illness. Paying attention to this level of the body and the phenomenological meanings of health and illness will bring the horizons of the patient's vision and the field of treatment closer together and they will communicate better with each other.