Well-Being and Culture: An African Perspective

Abstract

Well-being as a subject is often looked at from a Western perspective, including definitions and measurements. This, however, ignores the sociocultural characteristics of individuals or groups that may be crucial to the subjective conceptualization of well-being. The concept of well-being relates to understanding how people derive and interpret wellness regarding their interactions with other humans within the family, community and social context. This viewpoint of well-being is presented in this chapter as "holistic" from a cultural approach. The notion of well-being from an African perspective is usually defined within the framework of group norms, values, kinship relationships and ties entrenched in cultural values. The concept of well-being in this sense also runs counter to the idea of well-being in western cultures. The African is a 'group person', a 'family person' and the 'we person'. These sociocultural features are presumed to affect or influence well-being, mental health and treatment. This chapter expounds on techniques to effectively understand the culture in health from the African perspective. We submit that culturally sensitive measures of well-being will aid deeper exploration of the construct within the African setting and allow for a construct base comparison between Western and African settings.