Introduction to Health Psychology

This book is a balanced, well-founded and comprehensive European textbook with sufficient breadth of material to introduce students, yet ensuring research depth to be of benefit to graduate students as well as those undertaking health psychology projects. In addition to presenting traditional health psychology topics such as beliefs about health and illness, behaviors, and outcomes, topics such as socioeconomic influences on health, biological basis, individual and cultural differences, and psychological interventions in health, illness, and health care are also included, as they are all essential to the study of health psychology.

The chapters in the book are structured as follows: first, we consider the problems, then the theory, third, the research evidence, and finally, the application of the theory and (where appropriate) the effectiveness of interventions. First, we examine the factors that contribute to health, including social and behavioral factors, and how psychologists and other professionals can improve or maintain people’s health. Then, we examine the process of illness: the physiological systems that may fail in illness, the psychological factors that may contribute to the development of illness, how we cope with illness, and how the medical system copes with us when we become ill. Finally, we explore a range of psychological interventions that can improve the well-being, and perhaps even the health, of those who have health problems.