title: [Individual health-damaging behavior--extent and importance].
abstract: On the occasion of the World Health Day 1983 an appeal was again made to everybody's responsibility for the observance of health-promoting attitudes. On the national scale, numerous institutions have started long ago to concern themselves with the tasks of health education. In accordance with the definition laid down for the unhealthy behavior of individual persons, the most important types of health-compromising activities such as abuse of stimulants, habit-forming substances, pharmaceuticals and drugs are dealt with. Here allowance has been made for essential clinical and economic aspects to allow the consequences resulting from attitudes injurious to health to be assessed. Moreover, various health-damaging recreational pursuits are described and the medical terms from modern international literature are provided to permit compilation of a list of the diseases caused by leisure pursuits. In view of the significant incidence of degenerative cardio-vascular diseases and frequent metabolic disorders, the principle of risk factor evaluation is explained. For a systematic presentation of the spectrum of potentially health-damaging attitudes, the concept of exposure, load and stress is recommended as an approach which has already proved its worth in industrial medicine oriented toward the prevention of injuries to health. In the discussion of the consequences deriving from a health-damaging behavior of an individual, allowance is also made for social-medical aspects and recent court decisions.
mesh_terms: D000428:Alcohol Drinking; D001519:Behavior; D002318:Cardiovascular Diseases / Q000401:mortality; D005860:Germany, West; D006262:Health; D006266:Health Education; D006293:Health Promotion; D006801:Humans; D007899:Leisure Activities; D012306:Risk; D012907:Smoking; D013177:Sports; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders; D014195:Travel
vernacular_title: Gesundheitswidriges Eigenverhalten - Ausmass und Bedeutung.