Editorial – Health Education in Self-Care

By. Prof. Asoc. Dr. Voltisa LAMA

Self-care is a means whereby people take much greater responsibility for their own health and refers to the activities that individuals, families and communities undertake with the intention of enhancing health, preventing disease, limiting illness, and restoring health. These activities are derived from knowledge and skills from the pool of both professional and lay experience (Adamsone et al., WHO 1983). Health education enhances the competence of self-behavior in the population and makes people more willing to get appropriate health professional services when needed.

Nowadays culture and lifestyle play a major role in self-behavior. For example, excessive phone use by children and youths is decreasing their self-awareness of the importance of physical activity and maintaining a good body posture in favor of being comfortable and enjoying spending more time online using technology equipment. Making healthy lifestyle choices, avoiding unhealthy lifestyle habits, maintaining personal health regime, self-recognition of symptoms, self-monitoring, self-management, modeling good boundaries, taking care for physical and emotional balance and making responsible use of prescription and non-prescription medicines are core self-care responsibilities.

Some of the articles in Medicus 7, Issue 1 journal are focused on the effects of health education. Text neck pain was a common symptom related to excessive smartphone usage among third-year students of the Bachelor programs at the European University of Tirana. Still, students were not self-concerned, as using technology as a means of common and trendy free time activity was very important for them. The main source of information for sex education turned out to be the Internet, according to a study that included 200 young people 18-23 years old. Another article focused on self-care in patients with chronic diseases tried to determine self-care maintenance, monitoring, and management, as well as the importance of the dyad patient-caregiver in the context of Albania.

Health education in self-care is crucial as it would benefit from prevention and early management of illness and it would nourish healthy-oriented behaviour. Individuals are active agents in managing their own health and well-being (WHO, 2023). In the context of a safe, supportive, and educational environment that gives knowledge and accurate information, self-care gives power to individuals.