Psychological Model Of Illness

This open access book is a systematic update of the philosophical and scientific foundations of the biopsychosocial model of health, disease and healthcare. First proposed by George Engel 40 years ago, the Biopsychosocial Model is much cited in healthcare settings worldwide, but has been increasingly criticised for being vague, lacking in content, and in need of reworking in the light of recent developments. The book confronts the rapid changes to psychological science, neuroscience, healthcare, and philosophy that have occurred since the model was first proposed and addresses key issues such as the model’s scientific basis, clinical utility, and philosophical coherence. The authors conceptualise biology and the psychosocial as in the same ontological space, interlinked by systems of communication-based regulatory control which constitute a new kind of causation. These are distinguished from physical and chemical laws, most clearly because they can break down, thus providing the basis for difference between health and disease. This work offers an urgent update to the model’s scientific and philosophical foundations, providing a new and coherent account of causal interactions between the biological, the psychological and social.

Psychology of Health - Biopsychosocial Approach is based on the bio-psychosocial model of health, which aims to examine how biological, psychological, and social factors influence people's behavior regarding their health status. This book reflects the application of the bio-psychosocial model of health in many disciplines such as public health, psychology, psychiatric, mental health, community health, and nursing education. All the authors of this book have demonstrated how the bio-psychosocial model played an important role in addressing mental disease, tuberculosis, post-traumatic stress disorder, and obesity. This is an important book for students, academics, policy-makers, and community health practitioners.

This volume is the first comprehensive and interdisciplinary text to holistically improve understanding of the health of South Asians residing in the United States by considering biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors of health. The vast literatures of diverse fields – psychology, medicine, public health, social work, and health policy – are integrated by leading scholars, scientists, and practitioners in these areas to explore the impact of South Asian cultural factors on health, health risk, and illness. Chapters incorporate available theoretical and empirical information on the status of chronic health conditions in South Asians in the United States, with consideration of future directions to improve understanding of the health of this group. Cultural and ethnic insights imperative for clinical/community/medical practitioners to provide effective and culturally-appropriate care and treatment from an interdisciplinary lens are provided.

Many published books that comment on the medical model have been written by doctors, who assume that readers have the same knowledge of medicine, or by those who have attempted to discredit and attack the medical practice. Both types of book have tended to present diagnostic categories in medicine as universally scientifically valid examples of clear-cut diseases easily distinguished from each other and from health; with a fixed prognosis; and with a well-understood aetiology leading to disease-reversing treatments. These are contrasted with psychiatric diagnoses and treatments, which are described as unclear and inadequate in comparison. The Medical Model in Mental Health: An Explanation and Evaluation explores the overlap between the usefulness of diagnostic constructs (which enable prognosis and treatment decisions) and the therapeutic effectiveness of psychiatry compared with general medicine. The book explains the medical model and how it applies in mental health, assuming little knowledge or experience of medicine, and defends psychiatry as a medical practice.

The second edition of A Handbook for the Study of Mental Health provides a comprehensive review of the sociology of mental health. Chapters by leading scholars and researchers present an overview of historical, social and institutional frameworks. Part I examines social factors that shape psychiatric diagnosis and the measurement of mental health and illness, theories that explain the definition and treatment of mental disorders and cultural variability. Part II investigates effects of social context, considering class, gender, race and age, and the critical role played by stress, marriage, work and social support. Part III focuses on the organization, delivery and evaluation of mental health services, including the criminalization of mental illness, the challenges posed by HIV, and the importance of stigma. This is a key research reference source that will be useful to both undergraduates and graduate students studying mental health and illness from any number of disciplines.

This volume provides a comprehensive, up-to-date theoretical andempirical background to the psychology of reproductive health. Provides a life span perspective of the psychology ofreproductive health and its disorders, from menarche to menopauseand reproductive health in older age Focuses on issues of the individual's reproductive healthexperience, including reproduction, pregnancy, maternity, andbirth, as well as conditions such as PMDD, dysmenorrhea, and eventsincluding pregnancy failure, and abortion Acknowledges the wider social context with discussions ofpoverty, inequality, educational and economic status, age, andurban versus rural access Addresses life style related factors, human rights to choice,information and access, fertility control and reproductive healthregulation and health care services Illustrates topics with empirical data supported with tablesand figures

This is a manifesto for an entirely new approach to psychiatric care; one that truly offers care rather than coercion, therapy rather than medication, and a return to the common sense appreciation that distress is usually an understandable reaction to life's challenges.

It is important to address various psychological factors associated with chronic illness. Chronic illness requires proper health management because it cannot be cured fully but can be managed by both patients and medical professionals. The bio-medical perspective emphasizes the cure of illness based on objective clinical tests and ignores the importance of the patient’s own psychological perspective regarding illness. Psychological Model of Illness highlights the role of psychological factors in adaptation to chronic illness such as, myocardial infarction (heart attack). Psychological Model of Illness attempts to understand the illness behavior of myocardial infarction patients. It provides an empirical investigation of illness cognition, personality, coping and health related effects on quality of life. The findings reported in this book are empirically confirmed and also make sense intuitively and experimentally. Psychological Model of Illness provides a good blend of both quantitative and qualitative methods. The qualitative analysis indicates a number of ways in which the investigation of illness cognition, coping and health related quality of life might be viewed in a cultural context.