Illness and Sick-Role Behavior Health Article

ILLNESS AND SICK-ROLE BEHAVIOR

Generally, health-related behaviors of healthy people and those who try to maintain their health are considered as behaviors related to primary prevention of disease. Such behaviors are intended to reduce susceptibility to disease, as well as to reduce the effects of chronic diseases when they occur in the individual. Secondary prevention of disease is more closely related to the control of a disease that an individual has or that is incipient in the individual. This type of prevention is most closely tied to illness behavior. Tertiary prevention is generally seen as directed towards reducing the impact and progression of symptomatic disease in the individual. This type of prevention is highly related to the concept of sick-role behavior. In general, illness and sick-role behaviors are viewed as characteristics of individuals and as concepts derived from sociological and sociopsychological theories.

ILLNESS BEHAVIOR

The concept of illness behavior was largely defined and adopted during the second half of the twentieth century. Broadly speaking, it is any behavior undertaken by an individual who feels ill to relieve that experience or to better define the meaning of the illness experience. There are many different types of illness behavior that have been studied. Some individuals who experience physical or mental symptoms turn to the medical care system for help; others may turn to self-help strategies; while others may decide to dismiss the symptoms. In everyday life, illness behavior may be a mixture of behavioral decisions. For example, an individual faced with recurring symptoms of joint pain may turn to complementary or alternative medicine for relief. However, sudden, sharp, debilitating symptoms may lead one directly to a hospital emergency room. In any event, illness behavior is usually mediated by strong subjective interpretations of the meaning of symptoms. As with any type of human behavior, many social and psychological factors intervene and determine the type of illness behavior expressed in the individual.

Considerable research exists showing the importance of age and gender in illness behavior. Illness behavior, as shown in the use of medical services, is far greater in women. Many studies have linked illness-behavior variation to ethnicity, education, family structure, and social networks. Illness behavior is also shown to be related to health care coverage and insurance. Most importantly, illness behavior is highly related to socioeconomic status. Classic studies done in the 1950s powerfully demonstrated that socioeconomic class influenced how symptoms were acted on, with lower-class individuals (lower in socioeconomic status) most likely to delay seeking professional health care even when presented with severe symptoms.

While much of the early work on illness behavior was seen in the context of understanding patient help-seeking behavior, the large research literature on illness behavior has gone well beyond this more narrow medicalized view. Many studies have considered the different perspectives of illness behavior held by individuals and health care practitioners. The differing worldviews of patients and practitioners are now seen as highly relevant to illness behavior. The medical practitioner and the individual experiencing symptoms go through very different appraisals of the meaning of the symptoms. Increasingly in the literature there is the recognition of the strong relationship between the physical and mental experience of symptoms and the meaning of that experience for illness behavior. David Mechanic, a pioneer in the study of illness behavior, best summarizes the current perspective on illness behavior: "Illness behaviors arise from complex causes, including biological predispositions, the nature of symptomatology, learned patterns of response, attributional predispositions, situational influences, and the organization and incentives characteristic of the health care system that affect access, responsiveness and the availability of secondary benefits" (Mechanic, 1995).