Health psychology in African settings: a cultural-psychological analysis

African settings provide an important context in which to examine the relationship between cultural beliefs and health. First, research in African settings helps illuminate the sociocultural grounding of health and illness: the idea that beliefs play a constitutive role in the experience of distress. Second, research in African settings helps to illuminate the cultural grounding of health sciences: the idea that theory and practice reflect particular constructions of reality. We examine these ideas in the context of three research examples: the prominent experience of personal enemies; epidemic outbreaks of genital-shrinking panic; and fears about sabotage of vaccines in immunization campaigns.     

Playing in the mud: health psychology, the arts and creative approaches to health care

Health psychologists' use of the arts is an emerging area for research and practice. This article examines recent research findings and suggests strategies for incorporating the arts in health care across a wide range of clinical and community settings. Ethological theories support the evolutionary significance of the arts in human development and help form a foundation to understand the biopsychosocial processes involved in arts participation. This article builds upon this foundation and presents a wide range of arts and health interventions in the areas of health promotion and prevention, illness management, clinical assessment and improvement of the health care system.     

Health psychology for children: a step-child/stepping stone

This paper presents the position that health psychology for children is not given proper attention in mainstream health psychology, which is primarily adult in orientation. It is proposed that the neglect of child-related problems in the recent Proceedings of the National Conference on Training in Health Psychology exemplifies the general orientation of mainstream health psychology, which views children's health problems primarily in terms of their effect on adult health rather than as problems that need current and immediate attention. We propose that applying a developmental perspective to the health psychology field would be one way of highlighting the fact that children's problems are unique and that children need to be viewed as something other than potential consumers of adult health psychology services or as agents for the prevention of adult health problems.     

Health psychology and public health: theoretical possibilities

Public health has either implicitly or explicitly drawn upon a range of psychological theories. This paper identifies four areas where the application of such theory could be developed, health communication, environmental initiatives, the negotiation of behaviour and participation and empowerment. Recommendations are made regarding content, sources and recipient characteristics that can be used to develop targeted health communication campaigns. Psychology also has a role to play in informing structural approaches to prevention. To facilitate this, a framework which focuses on cues, reinforcer and barriers and an understanding of how behaviour is achieved through negotiation and interaction is outlined. Finally we highlight a role for psychology in approaches that focus on participation and empowerment in relation to health.     

Health psychology and social action

This article reviews the main epistemological approaches within health psychology. It considers the approach based on critical realism and various strategies for linking health psychology with social action. It argues that critical health psychology has a distinct contribution to make in promoting public health as part of the broader movement for social justice and health.     

Using the arts in teaching and learning: building student capacity for community-based work in health psychology

Perspectives have emerged within health psychology that focus on the social constitution of health and emphasize community development and social change strategies to reduce human suffering and improve quality of life. Education and training are needed to build student capacity in these areas. Our analysis, grounded in theoretical, empirical, and experiential evidences, suggests that the arts may play a leading role in building this student capacity for community research and action. Major themes are that the arts promote student understandings of the values, goals, and practices of community-based work and enable meaningful student roles in community-based partnerships. Narrative accounts of our use of creative writing, visual arts, poetry, film, and theater in classroom and community-based practice with students illustrate these themes.     

Health psychology in context

Over 25 years there has been a remarkable growth of theoretical and empirical studies in health psychology. Its theoretical underpinnings have been largely derivative, its focus primarily clinical, and its subject, the individual. Relatively little attention has been paid to the cultural, sociopolitical and economic conditions which set the context for individual health experience and behaviour. Theories which do not reflect the complex interaction of these variables are unlikely to provide a satisfactory account of individual health. Multidisciplinary efforts are needed at a community level to provide effective interventions which are relevant to the exposure groups being targeted. Health psychology needs measures which are valid and relevant to the general population regardless of culture, gender, social class or age. Putting health psychology into its cultural, sociopolitical and community context is a major priority for future development.     

Health psychology, embodiment and the question of vulnerability

The topic of the body is now firmly on the agenda for psychology, as it has been for sociology for some time. What contribution will health psychology make to this debate? This article argues that the biomedical view of the physical body is inappropriate for a psychology addressing the key concerns of suffering and healing. Instead, health psychology needs to theorize what it means to be embodied in the context of illness and of health care. To do this requires investigation of the practical relationships between staff and patients as well as of experiences of sufferers. By reflecting critically upon the relationship between clinical practice and the conceptualization of the body, a health psychology embracing the idea of embodiment becomes possible.     

Health policy perception and health behaviours: a multilevel analysis and implications for public health psychology

Associations of health policy perception with health behaviours are analysed. Policy perception is differentiated in information about programmes and appraisal of health policy's contribution to policy goals, and conceptualized on the level of: (1) individuals; and (2) populations (as a social climate indicator). Survey data from the Biomed2-Project MAREPS gathered in Belgium, Finland, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland (N= 3343) show that at the individual level, only policy information is associated with utilizing mammography, quitting smoking, physical activity and political participation in creating healthy environments. In contrast, multilevel regression analyses show that policy appraisal is related to physical activity and political participation as a social climate factor. Implications for integrating health psychology and public health within public health psychology are discussed.     

Health psychology and discourse: personal accounts as social texts in grounded theory

Traditional social psychology has largely located the origins of the social in the mental and emotional processes of individuals. Interview and questionnaire approaches have focused on the personal account as a route to cognitive processes and personality structures. In contrast, qualitative approaches like grounded theory have highlighted the importance of discourse in the constitution of the social world, and the function of talk and text in the construction of meaning. It is argued here that the use of such approaches, informed by insights from discourse analysis and current thinking on textuality, can enable analysts to read the personal account as a socially constructed, and constructing, text. This article uses examples from psychosocial oncology and from original research on the treatment experiences of a group of cancer patients to discuss new ways of reading personal accounts as social texts.     

Applied cognitive psychology: Implications of cognitive psychology for clinical psychology and psychotherapy

Cognitive psychology has made numerous contributions to clinical psychology, and these contributions are considered especially with reference to the anxiety disorders. It is argued that there are four major contributions that can be identified. First, the cognitive approach has led to the development of complex models showing the main cognitive processes and structures of relevance to an understanding of anxiety disorders. Second, controlled laboratory studies permit a more detailed investigation of cognitive biases in anxious patients than generally is feasible in more naturalistic settings. Third, the cognitive approach provides relevant evidence with respect to the issue of whether cognitive biases play a role in the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders. Fourth, the enhanced understanding of the anxiety disorders that has arisen from the cognitive approach has had beneficial effects on therapeutic practice in a number of significant ways. In sum, it is claimed that clinical psychology has benefited considerably from cognitive theory and research.