Lay Beliefs about Health Flashcards
What are lay beliefs?
- How people understand and make sense of health and illness
- Constructed by people with no specialised knowledge
- Complex – drawn from many different sources
What are the 3 different types of perceptions of health?
- Negative definition – health equates to the absence of illness
- Functional definition – health is the ability to do certain things
- Positive definition – health is a state of wellbeing and fitness
What influences lay beliefs about health and how can this affect medical information given to lay people?
Draw on cultural, social and personal knowledge and experience and own biography. Medical information may be rejected if it is incompatible with competing ideas for which people consider there is good evidence
What are the two issues lay epidemiology addresses?
- Understand why and how illness happens
2. Why it happened to a particular person at a particular time
What undermines the information given to lay people about health behaviour?
The randomness of health behaviour affecting outcome i.e. people who undertake a certain health relative behaviour but don’t develop the negative effects.
What is illness behaviour?
The activity of an ill person to define illness and seek solution
What influences illness behaviour?
- Culture – e.g. non complaining attitude
- Visibility of symptoms
- Extent to which symptoms disrupt life
- Frequency and persistence of symptoms
- Tolerance threshold
- Information and understanding
- Availability of resources
- Lay referral
What is sick role behaviour?
Formal response to symptoms including seeking formal help and action of person as patient
Whatis lay referral and lay referral system?
Relatively rare for someone to decide to visit a doctor without first discussing their symptoms with others most of those visiting a doctor have discussed their symptoms with someone else.
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 health care professionals.
Why is lay referral important?
Helps you to understand:
• Why people might have delayed in seeking help
• How, why and when people consult a doctor
• Use of health services and medication
• Use of alternative medicine
What are deniers and distancers in the context of addherence?
- Denied either having asthma at all (deniers) or denied having “proper” asthma (distancers)
- Claimed symptoms did not interfere with everyday life
- Used complex or drastic strategies to hide it
- Taking medication relies on accepting asthmatic identity so didn’t take drugs or attend asthma clinics
What are acceptors in the context of addherence?
Acceptors accept diagnosis and doctors’ advice completely. Normal life involved having control over symptoms through medication. Asthma not a stigmatised identity – happy to use inhalers in public.
What are pragmatists in the context of addherence?
Pragmatists Did use preventive medication but only when asthma was bad. Accepted they had asthma but saw it as a mild acute illness
