Health Behaviors

1
Health Behaviors

• Illness Behaviors
• Responses to the fact that one is perceiving
  symptoms or could be ill
• Include
• Attitudes toward seeking medical attention
• Methods of interpreting symptoms
• Preferred styles of health care
• Sick Role
• Behaviors and cognitions that occur when people
  define themselves as being ill or having been
  diagnosed with a disease

2
Health Behaviors

• Sick Role
• Privileges
• Stigma
• Excessive health-seeking behaviors
• Increased risk for psychopathology
• Mood
• traits

3
Health Behaviors

• Factors that influence reactions to physical
  symptoms
• Degree to which people focus attention on
  threatening events, like symptoms (highly
  correlated with neuroticism)
• Salience of bodily symptoms (e.g., medical
  students Niemi Vainiomaeki, 1999)
• Somatic focus
• Threshold of and tolerance for symptoms,
  especially pain
• Childhood experiences regarding symptoms
• Cultural background (Zborowski, 1952)
• Life circumstances at the time the physical
  symptoms are experienced
• Gender
• Cognitive factors such as the meaning attributed
  to the symptoms

4
Health Behaviors

• Determinants of Help-Seeking
• Symptom interpretation
• (Fillingham and Fine, 1986)
• Gender
• Women more likely to report and seek health care
• Women more accurately report symptoms when
  present
• But mention symptoms more often when they are not
  present
• SES
• Psychological Comorbidity
• Social Support

5
Health Behaviors

• Delay in seeking medical care is composed of 3
  parts
• Appraisal time
• Time it takes the patient to appraise his/her
  symptoms and to decide the sensations mean that
  something is wrong
• Illness Delay
• Time from the patients decision that he/she is
  ill to the decision to seek care
• Utilization delay
• Tim from the decision to seek care to the actual
  obtaining of medical services