Lay Beliefs Flashcards
What are lay beliefs?
How people understand and make sense of health and illness
Constructed by people with no specialised knowledge
How are lay beliefs formed?
Complex - drawn from many different sources.
How can lay beliefs have an impact on health?
Impact on health behaviour
Impact on illness behaviour
Impact on compliance/non-compliance with treatment
What are examples of deniers, distancers and pragmatists and what can these views have an effect on?
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
How can lay beliefs affect how information about things can be received?
Medical information may be rejected if it is incompatible with competing ideas for which people consider there is good evidence
What is lay epidemiology?
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
What is this negative definition about perceptions of health and which class normally holds this belief?
Absence of illness
More commonly believed in lower socioeconomic groups
What is the functional definition about perceptions of health?
Health is the ability to do certain things
What is the positive definition about perception of what health is? Which class normally holds this belief?
Health is a state of wellbeing and fitness
More common in higher socioeconomic groups
What is a health behaviour?
Activity undertaken for the purpose of maintaining health and preventing illness eg quitting smoking
What is the symptom/illness ice berg?
Most symptoms never get to a doctor
What is an illness behaviour?
Activity of an ill person is response to symptoms to define illness and seek solution, may include seeking professional help
What are determinants of health?
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
What is the lay referral system?
The chain of advice-seeking contacts which the sick make with other lay people prior to or instead of seeking help from healthcare professionals
What are the main global social causes of ill health, determinants of health?
Poverty
Social exclusion
Poor housing
Poor health systems
What is primary prevention?
Prevents the onset of disease or injury by reducing exposure to risk factors eg immunisation or smoking
What is secondary prevention?
Aims to detect and treat a disease or its risk factors at an early stage eg monitor BP or screen for cervical cancer
What is tertiary prevention?
Aims to minimise effects of established disease
Eg steroids for asthma, β-blockers for high BP, renal transplant for renal failure
What are some health promotion strategies based on?
Medical or preventive Behavioural change Educational Empowerment Social change
Give some of the dilemmas raised by health promotion
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
Expand upon the victim blaming dilemma
Focusing on individual behavioural change plays down the wider social determinants of health
Eg high perceived costs of eating a healthier diet
Explain the dilemma of the mistaken belief that giving people info gives people power
‘Fallacy of empowerment’
Unhealthy lifestyles are not due to ignorance but due to adverse circumstances and wider socioeconomic determinants of health
Explain the dilemma that is reinforcing of negative stereotypes
Leaflets aimed at HIV prevention in drug users can reinforce that drug users only have themselves to blame for their situation
Give an example of how there is unequal distribution of responsibility
Implementing health behaviours is often left up to women eg hey family to eat more fresh food and less processed food