The terms ‘wellness’ and ‘wellbeing’ are often used interchangeably, but they have different meanings depending on the context in which they're used. Both concepts focus on health and happiness, but they approach these goals from slightly different angles.

Here’s a closer look at each:

Wellness

Wellness is typically used to refer to the pursuit of physical and mental health and the actions an individual takes to maintain a healthy lifestyle. It emphasises the proactive steps taken to prevent illness and achieve optimal health through nutrition, physical activity, and mental health rituals and activities. Wellness is often presented as a multi-dimensional model that includes physical, emotional, intellectual, social, spiritual, occupational, and environmental aspects. Each of these dimensions contributes to an individual’s overall wellness, suggesting a more holistic approach to health that goes beyond merely avoiding being sick.

Wellbeing

Wellbeing is a broader concept that encompasses the overall quality of an individual's life. It includes health as well as emotional satisfaction, social connections, and economic stability. Wellbeing is often considered more encompassing than wellness because it includes subjective elements such as happiness, life satisfaction, finances and a sense of purpose. It reflects how individuals feel about their lives as a whole, rather than the specific efforts they take to maintain their health.

Key Differences

• Scope: Wellness is often action-oriented, focusing on the steps an individual takes to achieve a healthier lifestyle. Wellbeing is more comprehensive, considering a wider range of factors that contribute to a person’s overall quality of life.
• Measurement: Wellness tends to be more measurable in terms of specific health behaviours and outcomes (e.g., exercise frequency, dietary habits, and stress management), whilst wellbeing, can be measured through surveys and indices, but involves more subjective assessments of happiness, life satisfaction, and emotional fulfilment.
• Approach: Wellness generally promotes active engagement in health-promoting activities and behaviours whilst wellbeing encompasses these activities and includes the passive aspects of life that contribute to happiness and satisfaction, such as economic security and a supportive social network.

In summary, while wellness and wellbeing are terms that are often used interchangeably, wellness is more specifically focused on the prevention of illness through healthy lifestyle, whilst wellbeing covers a broader spectrum, including emotional, social, and economic aspects to improve the overall quality of an individual’s life.