Table of Contents

• PART I Being and staying healthy
• 1 What is health?
• 2 Health inequalities
• 3 Health-risk behaviour
• 4 Health-protective behaviour
• 5 Explaining health behaviour
• 6 Changing behaviour: mechanisms and approaches
• 7 Preventing health problems
• PART II Becoming ill
• 8 The body in health and illness
• 9 Symptom perception, interpretation and response
• 10 The consultation and beyond
• 11 Stress, health and illness: theory
• 12 Stress and illness moderators and interventions
• PART III Being ill
• 13 The impact of illness on quality of life
• 14 The impact of illness on patients and their families
• 15 Pain
• 16 Improving health and quality of life
• PART IV Futures
• 17 Futures
• Glossary
• Index

Download the detailed table of contents.

About the Author

Val Morrison is a Senior Lecturer in Health Psychology, and a chartered health psychologist, based at Bangor University. She has taught psychology since 1992, while maintaining a vibrant research group investigating psychosocial predictors of patient and carer outcomes of chronic disease and cancer.

Paul Bennett is Research Professor in the Nursing, Health and Social Research Centre at the University of Cardiff. He has published several books on health and clinical psychology as well as over 100 academic papers and chapters.

Phyllis Butow is a clinical psychologist, who is Professor of Health Psychology at the University of Sydney, NSW, Australia, and a National Health and Medical Research Council Senior Principle Research Fellow. She founded the Centre for Medical Psychology and Evidence-based Decision-making (CeMPED) and the Australian Psycho-Oncology Co-operative Research Group (PoCoG). She has published widely in the area of psycho-oncology. She has over 450 articles published in peer-reviewed journals, and has co-written one other book, co-edited four books and written 16 book chapters. She has a particular interest in doctor–patient communication, has facilitated many health professional communication skills workshops, and sits on a number of committees which have influenced the development of medical communication skills training in Australia.

Barbara Mullan is an associate professor and deputy head of school of the School of Psychology at Curtin University. She is a Chartered Health Psychologist with the British Psychological Society and is a registered Health psychologist with the with the Health and Care Professions Council.. She has worked in health psychology for more than 20 years and her teaching experience has been both in psychology and in allied health professions. Her research interests include social cognition models in predicting and intervening to improve health, particularly food-related behaviours, including food safety behaviours, nutrition, obesity and diabetes, the role of self-regulation and executive function in physical health and addiction. She is author of over 130 peer-reviewed articles.

Louise Sharpe is a Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Sydney, and Associate Head for Postgraduate Research Education for the School of Psychology. She is a Clinical Psychologist who is on the faculty for the Clinical Psychology degree at the University of Sydney, and supervises many clinical Masters and PhD students. She is an author of over 180 peer-reviewed articles, the majority on Health Psychology. Her research interests include the efficacy of cognitive and/or behavioural treatments in the management of chronic pain and rheumatoid arthritis, understanding the process of adjustment in patients with rheumatoid arthritis and other chronic illnesses and the role of hypervigilance in the development, maintenance, prevention and treatment of chronic pain.