Self-care

Self-care is 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.

While the concept of self care has received increased attention in recent years, it has ancient origins. Socrates has been credited with founding the self-care movement in ancient Greece, and care are of oneself and loved ones has been shown to exist since human beings appeared on earth.

Self-care has also been connected to the Black feminist movement through civil rights activist and poet Audre Lorde. Self-care was used to preserve black feminist's identities, energize their activism, and preserve their minds during the civil rights movement.

Self-care remains a primary form of personal and community healthcare worldwide; self-care practices vary greatly around the world.

Chronic illness (a health condition that is persistent and long lasting, often impacts one's whole life, e.g., heart failure, diabetes, high blood pressure) requires behaviors that control the illness, decrease symptoms, and improve survival such as medication adherence and symptom monitoring. An acute illness like an infection (e.g., COVID) requires the same types of self-care behaviors required of people with a chronic illness, but the medication adherence and symptom monitoring behaviors associated with an acute illness are typically short lived. Routine health maintenance self-care behaviors that individuals engage in (e.g., adequate sleep) are still required of those dealing with acute or chronic illness.