What are the "social determinants" of health?

Dear Jane Because we all experience illness personally (we all know what it’s like to have the flu), we tend to view health and illness in an individualistic way – as a product of bad luck, poor lifestyle or genetic fate. Yet this is only part of the story. Health and illness also have social determinants. For example, even the highly individual act of suicide often occurs in a social context. In 1998, of the 2683 suicide related deaths in Australia, over 80% were male, with the highest rates occurring between the ages of 20 and 39. While there will always be individual reasons for a person attempting suicide, social patterns in suicide rates suggest the story is more complex. The social pressures on men to be successful (in sport, school and at work) and to live up to ideas of what it is to be male (eg ‘boys don’t cry’, ask for help and must be overly heterosexual), can sometimes lead to the use of violence (including self-harm) to address problems. Similarly, the social pressures ...  more

The social determinants of health are the circumstances in which people are born, grow up, live, work and age, and the systems put in place to deal with illness. These circumstances are in turn shaped by a wider set of forces: economics, social policies, and politics.  more