Lay beliefs about health and illness

Howard Leventhal: Affiliation:
The State University of New Jersey
Yael Benyamini: Affiliation:
Tel Aviv University
Cristina Shafer: Affiliation:
The State University of New Jersey
Susan Ayers: Affiliation:
University of Sussex
Andrew Baum: Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
Chris McManus: Affiliation:
St Mary's Hospital Medical School
Stanton Newman: Affiliation:
University College and Middlesex School of Medicine
Kenneth Wallston: Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University School of Nursing
John Weinman: Affiliation:
United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy's and St Thomas's
Robert West: Affiliation:
St George's Hospital Medical School, University of London

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Summary

Risky behaviours promote and healthy behaviours reduce disease risks

The evidence is clear: risky behaviours can lead to health crises and healthy behaviours can delay and avoid health crises. Cigarette smoking increases the probability of multiple types of cancer in addition to lung cancer, including cancers in organs as far from the mouth and lungs as the cervix. Cigarette smoking also greatly increases the likelihood of cardiovascular disease. Yet lung cancer has now exceeded breast cancer as a cause of death among women. Obesity is a risk factor for a broad range of diseases (Thompson & Wolf, 2001) and we are facing an epidemic of Type 2 diabetes, formally seen among the elderly and now increasingly diagnosed among teenagers (Mokdad et al., 2001). The epidemic is occurring in spite of the clear evidence that weight loss and exercise can reduce the risk of diabetes. A multi-centre trial with over 3000 participants, each of whom was at high risk for becoming diabetic, found that exercise and dietary changes resulted in a 58% reduction in the number of individuals becoming diabetic whilst medication resulted in a 31% reduction relative to a control group receiving placebo (Knowler et al., 2002). In short, despite knowledge of risk many people smoke, eat unhealthy, high fat, high calorie foods and are physically inactive. Knowledge of risk does not translate into risk avoidant behaviour (see also ‘Health related behaviours’).

Type: Chapter
Information: Cambridge Handbook of Psychology, Health and Medicine , pp. 124 - 128

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511543579.027 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2007

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