Perceptions Of Health And Illness

by Petrie, Keith J.; Weinman, John A.

• ISBN13: 9789057021022
• ISBN10: 9057021021
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-07-01
• Publisher: Psychology Pr

Summary

The study of how individuals perceive and make sense of health and illness is a new and rapidly developing area in health psychology. The field has undergone important recent theoretical developments and applications to a wide range of health threats and illnesses. The first section of this book examines current theoretical and measurement issues in the field and includes issues related to illness perceptions across the life-span, disability, and the assessment of illness representations in chronic illness. The second section addresses the role of illness perceptions in health screening and prevention and includes work on perceptions of genetic disease, cancer screening, and how individuals process health risk information. The third section is concerned with the application of illness perceptions to patients with chronic illness and those undergoing treatment. Illnesses examined using this approach include chronic fatigue syndrome, breast cancer, diabetes, and myocardial infarction.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Perceptions of Health and Illness	p. 1
Illness representations: Theoretical foundations	p. 19
Children's perceptions of health and illness	p. 47
Are there differences in perceptions of illness across the lifespan?	p. 77
Measurement of illness perceptions in patients with chronic somatic illnesses: A review	p. 103
Representations of medication and treatment: Advances in theory and measurement	p. 155
Representations of disability	p. 189
Cognitive representations and preventative health behavior: A review	p. 213
Illness representations after the human genome project: The perceived role of genes in causing illness	p. 241
Processing risk factor information: Defensive biases in health-related judgments and memory	p. 267
Screening for cancer: Illness perceptions and illness worry	p. 291
Illness representations and the self-management of diabetes	p. 323
Self regulation and psycho-educational interventions for rheumatic disease	p. 349
Illness representations and breast cancer: Coping with radiation and chemotherapy	p. 379
The role of illness cognitions and coping in the aetiology and maintenance of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)	p. 411
Illness representations and recovery from myocardial infarction	p. 441
Virtual narratives: Illness representations in online support groups	p. 463
Index	p. 487
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