Explaining Health and Illness: An Exploration of Diversity

What does it mean to be healthy? Why do we get ill? What makes us recover? This book is about how people answer these questions and draw different conclusions to explain health and illness. It is broad in scope, and examines psychological, sociological and anthropological theories, as well as the author's own research in the field. Accounts of health and illness are identified and described, drawing upon notions of stress, willpower and personal autonomy, upon explanatory frameworks such as the medical model, health promotion and the socio-politics of health and disease, as well as theistic and traditional discourses. This text may be useful for students of social psychology, medical sociology, social anthropology, health psychology and health policy.