Health Psychology

ILLNESS
COGNITIONS
 What does it mean to be healthy?

 The World Health Organization (1947) defined good health

as ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well-
being.’
 Lau (1995) found that when young healthy adults were
asked to describe in their owns words ‘what being healthy
means to you’ these were the dimensions:
 Physiological/physical

 Psychological

 Behavioral

 future consequences

 the absence of illness

What does it mean to be ill?
 Lau’s study yielded the following concepts:
 Not feeling normal
 Specific symptoms
 Specific illnesses
 Consequences of illness
 Time line (how long the symptoms last)
 The absence of health
What are illness cognitions?
 Leventhal (1985, 1997) defined this as ‘a patient’s own
implicit common sense belief about their illness.’
 Cognitions provide schema for coping with and

understanding their illness

Five cognitive dimensions of these beliefs:
 Identity
 The perceived cause of the illness
 Time line
 Consequences
 Curability and controllability
Leventhal’s self-regulatory model of illness
cognitions

 Is based on approaches to problem solving and

suggests that illness/symptoms are dealt with by
individuals in the same way as other problems
 Traditional models describe problem solving in
three stages:

• Interpretation
• Coping
• Appraisal
Stage 1: Interpretation
 An individual may be confronted with the problem of a
potential illness through two channels:
• Symptom perception ‘I have pain in my chest’
• Social messages ‘the doctor has diagnosed this pain
as angina.’
 The individual is then motivated to return to a state of
‘problem-free’ normality.
 This involves assigning meaning to the problem, which
can be done by accessing the individual’s illness
cognitions
Stage 1: Interpretation
 The symptoms and social messages will contribute
towards the development of illness cognitions, which
will be constructed according to the following
dimensions:
 Identity

 Cause

 Consequences

 Time line

 Cure/control
Stage 2: Coping
 Is the development and identification of suitable
coping strategies.

 The two broad categories of coping strategies:

 Approach coping (taking pills, going to the doctor,

resting, talking to friends about emotions)

 Avoidance coping (denial, wishful thinking)
Stage 3: Appraisal

 Involves individuals evaluating the effectiveness of

the coping strategy and determining whether to
continue with this strategy or whether to opt for an
alternative one.