Are health beliefs and illness perceptions same thing? if not , what are their key differences? what are the formal definitions of both terms? It will highly be appreciated if someone share some readings on basic understanding of both terms. I am using them in the context of help-seeking for chronic hepatitis.
Regards
The Health Belief Model (HBM) is a psychological model that attempts to explain and predict health behaviours. This is done by focusing on the attitudes and beliefs of individuals. http://www.jblearning.com/samples/0763743836/chapter%204.pdf
Illness perceptions are the organized cognitive representations or beliefs that patients have about their illness. These perceptions have been found to be important determinants of behaviour and have been associated with a number of important outcomes see http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/552098
I agree with Martyn. I would only add that illness perceptions can be usefully classified into illness self-perceptions and illness perceptions by others. The latter category opens up a whole under-theorized area of reflection about illness and the social dynamics of contempt:
Article Considering neoliberalism, contempt, and allostatic load in ...
You need to read talcott Parsons and his concept of the sick persona it's a good sociological theory around health and illness
Read the first three chapters of Drew Leder's 'The Absent Body'. It's stunning, and will offer you many insights into the emobodied nature of experience, and how pain and disability demand interpretation and action (such as help-seeking).
Also, in my humble opinion, a foundational philosophy (such as phenomenology) will provide a far more stable basis for your studies... rather than derivative concepts like health beliefs. (perceptions is by far a more useful concept - see also Merlau-Ponty inspired work.)
Cheers.
According to the best of my knowledge these two components are in different qualities. it is possible that some one with serious disease believes that he/she is healthy and on the other side some one without any health problem was unsatisfied with his/ her healthy and thinks about his/ her illness. It seems that both of them are not totally related to reality and the others factor such as personal definition and criteria of illness, personal involvement and life style, satisfaction of the other areas in life, quality of life, temporary emotions and even their future goal and expectations can influence on both of them.
perception of illness can also be considered as a mechanism to justify the defeats and weakness of people.
Beliefs about health encompass much more than just the absence of illness. As Dr. Jafari has pointed out, an individual may have an illness or diagnosed condition, and still be healthy - within the confines of that condition.
There are different approaches to medicine. We have allopaths, naturopaths, osteopaths and homeopaths. The allopaths are associated with the pharmaceutical industry and passed laws to protect their interests. In the allopathic paradigm we focus on the treatment and management of disease with pharmaceuticals declaring most diseases to be chronic and incurable. This is illness perception. In health beliefs we focus on prevention and cures and focus on nutrients, exercise, and avoidance of toxins. There is a law that states that only a drug can legally cure a disease which makes curing a disease with nutrition illegal. Therefor illness perceptions are legal and appropriate and health beliefs are illegal and inappropriate. This is called capitalistic medicine as opposed to scientific medicine.
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