Perceptions of Health and Illness

First Published in 1997. 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 seen important recent theoretical developments and applications to a wide range of health threats and illnesses. The first section of this book examines the current theoretical and measurement issues in the field and includes issues related to illness perceptions across the lifespan, 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 the illness perceptions approach to patients with chronic illness and those undergoing treatment. Illnesses examined using this approach include chronic fatigue syndrome, breast cancer, diabetes, and myocardial infarction.

Keith J. Petrie is an Associate Professor at the University of Auckland Faculty of Medicine and Health Science. He initially trained and worked as a clinical psychologist before moving into the health psychology area. His research interests are primarily in how patients' perceptions of their illness and symptoms influence their adjustment and coping. His work in this area has been mainly on patients who have heart disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, and women undergoing cancer treatment. He also does research in the psychoimmunology field where he investigates the effect of emotional expression and suppression on changes in immune function. John A. Weinman is Professor of Psychology as applied to Medicine at the United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy's and St. Thomas's Hospitals in the University of London, where he teaches medical students and runs a M.Sc programme in Health Psychology. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and his main research interests are cognition and health, communication in health care and individual differences in cognition. He is founding editor of Psychology and Health: An International Journal and has written and edited a number of books on health psychology. He is currently Chair of the British Psychological Society's Special Group in Health Psychology.

Perceptions of Health and Illness Section 1: Illness perceptions: Theory and measurement 1 Illness representations: Theoretical foundations 2 Children's perceptions of health and illness 3 Are there differences in perceptions of illness across the lifespan? 4 Measurement of illness perceptions in patients with chronic somatic illnesses: A review 5 Representations of medication and treatment: Advances in theory and measurement 6 Representations of disability Section 2: Illness perceptions in prevention and health Screening 7 Cognitive representations and preventative health behaviour: A review 8 Illness representations after the human genome project: The perceived role of genes in causing illness 9 Processing risk factor information: Defensive biases in health-related judgments and memory 10 Screening for cancer: Illness perceptions and illness worry Section 3: Illness perceptions in illness and treatment 11 Illness representations and the self-management of diabetes 12 Self regulation and psycho-educational interventions for rheumatic disease 13 Illness representations and breast cancer: Coping with radiation and chemotherapy 14 The role of illness cognitions and coping in the aetiology and maintenance of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) 15 Illness representations and recovery from myocardial infarction 16 Virtual narratives: Illness representations in online support groups