Lay Beliefs

Question 0

What are lay beliefs?

Answer 0

How people understand and make sense of health and illness

Constructed by people with no specialised knowledge

Question 1

How are lay beliefs formed?

Answer 1

Complex - drawn from many different sources.

Question 2

How can lay beliefs have an impact on health?

Answer 2

Impact on health behaviour
Impact on illness behaviour
Impact on compliance/non-compliance with treatment

Question 3

What are examples of deniers, distancers and pragmatists and what can these views have an effect on?

Answer 3

Deniers - believe they don’t have an illness eg asthma
Distancers - believe they don’t have it properly eg proper asthma
Pragmatists - only use preventative medication when asthma was bad

Question 4

How can lay beliefs affect how information about things can be received?

Answer 4

Medical information may be rejected if it is incompatible with competing ideas for which people consider there is good evidence

Question 5

What is lay epidemiology?

Answer 5

Understanding of why and how illness happens
Why it happens to a particular person at a particular time
Not infallible eg overweight smoker who always drinks who lives a king and healthy life

Question 6

What is this negative definition about perceptions of health and which class normally holds this belief?

Answer 6

Absence of illness

More commonly believed in lower socioeconomic groups

Question 7

What is the functional definition about perceptions of health?

Answer 7

Health is the ability to do certain things

Question 8

What is the positive definition about perception of what health is? Which class normally holds this belief?

Answer 8

Health is a state of wellbeing and fitness

More common in higher socioeconomic groups

Question 9

What is a health behaviour?

Answer 9

Activity undertaken for the purpose of maintaining health and preventing illness eg quitting smoking

Question 10

What is the symptom/illness ice berg?

Answer 10

Most symptoms never get to a doctor

Question 11

What is an illness behaviour?

Answer 11

Activity of an ill person is response to symptoms to define illness and seek solution, may include seeking professional help

Question 12

What are determinants of health?

Answer 12

A range of factors that have a powering and cumulative effect on the health of the population, because they shape behaviours and environmental risk factors

Question 13

What is the lay referral system?

Answer 13

The chain of advice-seeking contacts which the sick make with other lay people prior to or instead of seeking help from healthcare professionals

Question 14

What are the main global social causes of ill health, determinants of health?

Answer 14

Poverty
Social exclusion
Poor housing
Poor health systems

Question 15

What is primary prevention?

Answer 15

Prevents the onset of disease or injury by reducing exposure to risk factors eg immunisation or smoking

Question 16

What is secondary prevention?

Answer 16

Aims to detect and treat a disease or its risk factors at an early stage eg monitor BP or screen for cervical cancer

Question 17

What is tertiary prevention?

Answer 17

Aims to minimise effects of established disease

Eg steroids for asthma, β-blockers for high BP, renal transplant for renal failure

Question 18

What are some health promotion strategies based on?

Answer 18

Medical or preventive
Behavioural change
Educational
Empowerment 
Social change

Question 19

Give some of the dilemmas raised by health promotion

Answer 19

Ethics of interfering in people's lives
Victim blaming
Mistaken belief that giving people info gives them power
Reinforcing of negative stereotypes
Unequal distribution of responsibility 
Prevention paradox

Question 20

Expand upon the victim blaming dilemma

Answer 20

Focusing on individual behavioural change plays down the wider social determinants of health
Eg high perceived costs of eating a healthier diet

Question 21

Explain the dilemma of the mistaken belief that giving people info gives people power

Answer 21

‘Fallacy of empowerment’
Unhealthy lifestyles are not due to ignorance but due to adverse circumstances and wider socioeconomic determinants of health

Question 22

Explain the dilemma that is reinforcing of negative stereotypes

Answer 22

Leaflets aimed at HIV prevention in drug users can reinforce that drug users only have themselves to blame for their situation

Question 23

Give an example of how there is unequal distribution of responsibility

Answer 23

Implementing health behaviours is often left up to women eg hey family to eat more fresh food and less processed food

Question 24

What is the prevention paradox?

Answer 24

Interventions that make a difference at population level may not have much effect on the individual

Question 25

What is the relevance of lay beliefs to health promotion interventions?

Answer 25

Candidacy - if people don’t see themselves as a candidate for a disease then they may not rake on board the relevant health promotion messages

Lay epidemiologies - eg awareness of anomalies and the randomness of heart attacks

Question 27

What are the difficulties of evaluating outcomes of health promotion?

Answer 27

Design of the intervention

Timing can influence outcome

• decay - some intervention might take a long time to have an effect
• delay - some interventions wear of rapidly

Many potential intervening or concurrent confounding factors
High cost of evaluating research - studies are likely to be large scale and long term.

Question 28

What factors affect the symptom iceberg?

Answer 28

Culture
Visibility or salience of symptoms
Extent to which symptoms disrupt life
Frequency and persistence of symptoms
Tolerance threshold
Information and understanding
Availability of resources
Lay referral

Question 29

What are the three types of health promotion evaluation?

Answer 29

Process - the process of programme implementation

Impact - what effect did it have

Outcome - what has it achieved in the longer term