Lay Health Beliefs

Question 1

What is a lay health belief?

Answer 1

Beliefs about health and illness held by non-professionals

Question 2

What is health?

Answer 2

Health s a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity

Question 3

Give the 4 categories of lay health beliefs by Hughner and Kleine 2004

Answer 3

Definitions of health

Explanations for health/low health is maintained

External and unrollable factors that affect health

The place health occupies in people’s lives

Question 4

Name some of the concepts lay health beliefs include

Answer 4

Heath through meditation and/or prayer

Health is dependent upon mental attitude

Heath through working

Religious and supernatural explanations

Health maintained through rituals

Heath dependent upon our relationships with others and is moral responsibility

Health is maintained through internal monitoring

Poor health is one’s own fault

Question 5

Explain the impact of beliefs about treatments

Answer 5

Beliefs that the diet makes nutritionally balanced diet difficult, and worry about inconveniencing or offending other people = Lower adherence to diet

Beliefs that the diet helps prevent/minimise symptoms and makes them feel physically better = higher adherence to diet

Question 6

Explain beliefs about medication

Answer 6

‘Necessity beliefs’: How much do I need this medicine?

‘Concern’s beliefs’: U worry about side-effects

Good predicators of adherence for diabetes, cancer, CHD, asthma, HIV/AIDS, rheumatoid arthritis

Decrease necessity beliefs + increase concern beliefs = decreased adherence

Question 7

Health is the result of what 3 things

Answer 7

A result of policies and institutions

Affected by the environment

Genetics

Question 8

Name and explain the 2 places health occupies in people lives

Answer 8

Priority:

Completing priorities: family/children, financial obligations, work, time

Health often taken for granted when no sever health conditions

Used as business strategy (e.g. only £2/week for your health)

Contradictory nature:

People’s knowledge or what they say is not exactly equal to their behaviour

People can hold simultaneous and contradictory beliefs, and use opposing sources of information

Question 9

Give some professional health beliefs

Answer 9

Own vision of illness and its causes

Own estimations of the probability of the hypothesis and disease e.g. scurvy

Own interpretations of the seriousness and treatability of the disease

Personal knowledge of the patient: medical history, environment

Health professional’s stereotypes e.g. how the client looks, talks

Question 10

Explain ways to have a client-centered approach

Answer 10

It is not about treating others like we would like to be treated

Consider the person as a partner and an expert in their own life

Listen (for real)

Be open and flexible, in effort to see the situation through their eyes choose your battles

Involve them in the decision making and plan to integrate what they value in your approach

Be attentive to emptions - both yours and the client’s

Question 11

Explain what health behaviours are

Answer 11

Behavioural patterns, actions and habits that relate to health maintenance, to health restoration and to health imponent

Question 12

name the 3 categories of the biopsychosocial model and explain them

Answer 12

Bio - viruses, bacteria etc

Psycho - behaviour, beliefs, stress etc

Social - class, employment, ethnicity

Question 13

Name the factors that affect health status - direct and indirect pathway

Answer 13

Physical factors to health status (direct pathway)

I am feeling stressed
I value my health
I am healthy

Physiological factors are influenced by the following which also indirectly has an effect on health status:

Smoking
Drinking
Eating
Screening
Exercise

Question 14

Explain what construct (psychology) is

Answer 14

Construct (psychology), also hypothetical construct or psychological construct, is a tool used to facilitate understanding of human behaviour. A psychological construct is a label for a domain of behaviours

Question 15

Give some factors that affect variability

Answer 15

Social norms

Knowledge - impacts awareness but likely to be sufficient

Health beliefs

Peer pressure

Habit

Illness beliefs

Risk perception - Personal susceptibility/judgement about how ‘at risk’ you are/ association with people who have X

Decision making

Self-efficacy - belief in own ability to perform behaviour low or high

Attitudes - Attitudes about all aspects of life/behaviour e.g. vegetables are healthy

Question 16

Name and explain the 3 factors that influence risk perception

Answer 16

Deliberative - % disease likelihood or likelihood of disease compared to others

Affective - Worry or anxiety about a threat, ‘gut feeling’

Experiential - rapid judgements made by interrogating deliberative and affective information

Question 17

Explain what an attitude is

Answer 17

An attituded is a learned predisposition to respond to an object or a class of objects in a consistently favourable or unfavourable way