This manuscript aimed to briefly analyze the historical background of the health-disease process and its implications for the role played by the individual in making healthy decisions. It is observed how the understanding of the process itself has initially placed the individual as an expectant being before specialized medical knowledge and the recommendations or interventions necessary to obtain health; however, as knowledge has advanced, this perspective has been surpassed because the material resources at the level of health systems have not worked to reduce mortality in populations. That is why we have opted for a vision of individual agency, however, in a more current vision for both physical and mental health, it is observed that contextual conditions such as social and material conditions have a great influence on individuals to choose their healthy behaviours. (Del autor)