Perceptions of Health & Illnes

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.