Summary
Contents
How do we understand health in relation to society? What role does culture play in shaping our experiences of, and orientation to, health and illness? How do we understand medicine and medical treatment within a sociological framework?
Illness and Health-Related Behaviour
Illness and Health-Related Behaviour
Illness behaviour refers to how people interpret and define their symptoms and their actions in coping with or accommodating these, whereas health-related behaviour, especially in biomedical research, typically refers to lifestyle ‘choices’ associated with an increased mortality risk.
Illness behaviour refers to people's experiences, definitions and interpretations of the symptoms of illness/disease/injury etc., and their interactions with various social networks as they try to cope with or accommodate these symptoms. Illness behaviour is a long-standing topic within medical sociology (see, for example, Zola, 1973). Health-related behaviour is also of interest to medical sociologists, albeit in a more critical manner. Such behaviours reportedly have a determinate influence on the major causes of mortality. Qualitative methods typically inform research ...