Lay Health Beliefs

Question 1

Health as Functioning Capacity Model

Answer 1

• Health viewed as coping with everyday activities
• Largely a working-class concept or those with chronic ill health

Indicators:

1) Main criteria for health is the ability to fulfil one’s social and work roles
2) ‘Never having a day’s illness’ viewed as moral individual characteristics (positive)

Question 2

‘Disease Candidancy’ Model

Answer 2

• Utilised by patients as lay explanations of relative risk of disease and relative efficacy of complying with preventative health behaviours
• Constructed based on:
  1) Appearance of individual
  2) Circumstances surrounding the event

Indicators:

1) Identification of individual retrospectively and/or predictably
2) Teleological explanation of illness (i.e. underlying risk factors)

Question 3

Health beliefs and Compliance

Answer 3

• Used to explain for lack of compliance with healthy lifestyle advice
• Demonstrates the contraindications between health messages and health beliefs of patients based on their own experiences
• Compliance is built upon an effective relationship with the clinician
• Clinician must be:
  1) Need to engage and not be dismissive of patient’s beliefs about risk and casualty
  2) Be sensitive to cultural differences

Question 4

Lay Referral system

Answer 4

-Patients tend to speak to family members/friends or use other resources to seek info about health and ‘out of norm’ symptoms before approaching a health professional for advice

Question 5

Help seeking behaviour Model

Answer 5

1) Perception of illness (social, personal, physical)
2) Accommodation to symptoms
3) Breakdown of accommodation because of:
- > Inter-personal crisis (e.g. family history)
- > Sanctioning by family members/friends to seek help
- > Perceived interference with work activities
- > Perceived interference with leisure/social activities
- >Symptoms persist beyond arbitrary time limit set by individual
4) Decision to seek help
- > Lay referral system
- > Professional help (i.e. GP)
- > Self-medication

Question 6

Application to Information Age

Answer 6

• Patients actively seek information from both professional and non-professional sources
• Digital technologies have extended and enhanced the lay referral system
• Patients tend to make a provisional self-diagnosis before confirming their illness with a telephone consultation
• Cultural assumptions and values about the ‘sick role’ prevail –> importance of preserving the status as ‘deserving’ patients (only then should they seek professional help)