Illness Representations and Coping With Health Threats

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
This chapter provides an overview of our research into how people interpret and cope with health threats. It describes the application of the model to long-term, asymptomatic illnesses such as hypertension. The chapter discusses the interventions, the process of changing knowledge and attitudes to alter health and illness behaviors. The aforementioned data led David Steele to tape-record several treatment encounters between each of 250 hypertensive patients and their health care providers in a longitudinal study that observed each patient over a 9- to 12-month period. A major goal of our research program is to develop educational interventions for reducing stress and for enhancing people’s understanding, and attitudes, and behavior with regard to health practices. The influence is reciprocal—the organization of the care system affects illness representations, and our collective history of individual acute illness has organized the health care system.

This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit: