Self-care practices: conceptualization, forms and measurement

Context and relevance. This article provides an overview of approaches to the study of self-care practices — an important aspect of health and well-being that is currently attracting growing interest. Objective. To systematize the knowledge on self-care practices available in contemporary international scientific literature. Methods and materials. Narrative literature review. Conclusions. Analysis of the studies revealed that this phenomenon remains insufficiently conceptualized and poorly differentiated from related concepts — self-help and self-management. A fundamental distinction lies in the applicability of self-care practices not only in the context of treating illnesses but also in the daily lives of healthy people. This allows them to be viewed as small, conscious, purposeful, and repetitive proactive and reactive actions, the performance of which a person controls themselves, aimed at regulating and maintaining their condition, health, and well-being. The literature identifies numerous domains of self-care in both personal and professional spheres, which creates complexity in classification. The boundaries between domains remain arbitrary, and the same practices may be attributed to different domains depending on the researcher’s approach and the user’s perception. Existing scales designed to measure self-care practices primarily record the frequency and/or occurrence of their use and do not account for motivation, regularity, and the context in which actions are performed.