Health, disease, wellness, and illness have long been concepts central to health care disciplines. To further develop theory regarding the individual's experience of health and disease, a meta-analysis was undertaken of 112 qualitative studies from 1980 to 1991. A synthesis of qualitative research was done to derive substantive interpretations about health, disease, wellness, and illness from grounded theory, phenomenological, and ethnographic perspectives. The texts were compared and analyzed, creating new interpretations through synthesis of reciprocal translations. A dialectic model of wellness-illness was inductively derived. The process, meaning, and context inherent in the experience of health-disease are described as "living-in-the-world" of health-disease. Wellness-illness is depicted as the human experience of actual or perceived function-dysfunction. The theory emerging from this meta-analysis of qualitative research provides a synthesis of the commonalities among individual representations of health and disease.
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