Self-care has been defined as the process of establishing behaviors to ensure holistic well-being of oneself, to promote health, and actively manage illness when it occurs. Individuals engage in some form of self-care daily with food choices, exercise, sleep, and hygiene. Self-care is not only a solo activity, as the community—a group that supports the person performing self-care—overall plays a role in access to, implementation of, and success of self-care activities.
Routine self-care is important when someone is not experiencing any symptoms of illness, but self-care becomes essential when illness occurs. General benefits of routine self-care include prevention of illness, improved mental health, and comparatively better quality of life. Self-care practices vary from individual to individual. Self-care is seen as a partial solution to the global rise in health care costs that is placed on governments worldwide.
A lack of self-care in terms of personal health, hygiene and living conditions is referred to as self-neglect. Caregivers or personal care assistants may be needed. There is a growing body of knowledge related to these home care workers.
Self-care and self-management, as described by Lorig and Holman, are closely related concepts. In their spearheading paper, they defined three self-management tasks: medical management, role management, and emotional management; and six self-management skills: problem solving, decision making, resource utilization, the formation of a patient–provider partnership, action planning, and self-tailoring.
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