Health issues

Students should be able to describe the relationship between health and disease and the interactions between different types of disease.

Health is the state of physical and mental well-being.

Diseases, both communicable Communicable diseases (page 35) and non-communicable, are major causes of ill health. Other factors including diet, stress and life situations may have a profound effect on both physical and mental health.

Different types of disease may interact.

• Defects in the immune system mean that an individual is more likely to suffer from infectious diseases.
• Viruses living in cells can be the trigger for cancers.
• Immune reactions initially caused by a pathogen can trigger allergies such as skin rashes and asthma.
• Severe physical ill health can lead to depression and other mental illness.

Students should be able to translate disease incidence information between graphical and numerical forms, construct and interpret frequency tables and diagrams, bar charts and histograms, and use a scatter diagram to identify a correlation between two variables.

MS 2c, 2g, 4a