Background and Objectives: The assessment of wellbeing is a top priority
in health sciences. The aim of this paper is to review the history of the concept of wellbeing
and “Quality of Life” (QoL), and to understand the theories and assumptions that
guided this field in order to provide a conceptual framework that may eventually facilitate
the development of a formal synset (grouping of synonyms and semantically similar
terms) of health-related wellbeing
Methods: The history of the concept of wellbeing and QoL was reviewed in order to
provide a conceptual framework.
Results: Huge differences exist on the definition of “Wellbeing” and its relationship
with QoL, “Happiness” and “Functioning” in the health context. From a dimensional perspective,
health related wellbeing could be regarded as an overarching construct characterised
by asymmetrical polarity, where “wellbeing” embeds the concept of “ill-being” as
“health” incorporates de concept of “disease”.
Conclusions: A common conceptual framework of these terms may eventually facilitate
the development of a formal synset of health-related wellbeing. This terminological
clarification should be part of a new taxonomy of health-related wellbeing based on the
International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) framework that
may facilitate knowledge transfer across different sectors and semantic interoperability for
care management and planningThe research leading to these results has received
funding from the European Community’s
Seventh Framework Programme under
grant agreement numbers 223071 (COURAGE
in Europe) and 282586 (ROAMER), from the
Instituto de Salud Carlos III-FIS research
grant number PS09/00295, and from the
Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation
ACI-Promociona (ACI2009-1010 and ACI-
2011-1080). The study was supported by the
Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de
Salud Mental (CIBERSAM), Instituto de
Salud Carlos II
