The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Issues in Health and Illness is a multidisciplinary reference book that brings together cutting-edge health and illness topics from around the globe. It offers a range of theoretical and critical perspectives to provide contemporary insights into complex health issues that can offer ways to address inequitable patterns of illness and ill health. This collection, written by an international pool of expert academics from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, is unique in providing theoretical and critical analyses on key health topics, considering power and broader social structures that influence health and illness outcomes. The chapters are organised in three parts. The first covers medical contexts; here, chapters provide commentary and critical analysis of the history of medicine, medicalisation, pharmaceuticalisation, services and care, medical technology, diagnosis, screening, personalised medicine, and complementary and alternative medicine. The second part covers life contexts; chapters include a range of life contexts that have implications for health, including gender, sexuality, reproduction, disability, ethnicity, indigeneity, inequality, ageing, and dying. The third part covers shifting contextual domains; chapters consider contemporary areas of life that are rapidly changing, including bioethics, digital health, migration, medical travel, geography and "place", commercialisation, globalisation, and climate change. The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Issues in Health and Illness is a key contemporary reference text for scholars, students, researchers, and professionals across disciplines, including sociology, psychology, anthropology, geography, medicine, public health, and health science.

This textbook aims to provide students with a stimulating alternative to the textbooks currently available by placing the discipline within the context of the social world and encouraging them to question some of the assumptions and values underlying much current research. A comprehensive survey of the discipline is provided, framed within a lifespan approach, and emphasising social-cultural factors such as gender, ethnicity and social-economic status. All major topics are covered, including health behaviours, health promotion, coping strategies, stress, biomedical and biopsychosocial models of health and illness, chronic illnesses, psychoneuroimmunology, disability, pain, and patient-provider communication. Each topic is situated within its social and cultural context and constantly linked back to real-world experience. Chapters include valuable features such as research updates, learning objectives and recommended readings. This book will be an invaluable resource for students of health psychology across a range of disciplines including psychology, anthropology and health studies.

The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Issues in Health and Illness is a multidisciplinary reference book that brings together cutting-edge health and illness topics from around the globe. It offers a range of theoretical and critical perspectives to provide contemporary insights into complex health issues that can offer ways to address inequitable patterns of illness and ill health. This collection, written by an international pool of expert academics from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, is unique in providing theoretical and critical analyses on key health topics, considering power and broader social structures that influence health and illness outcomes. The chapters are organised in three parts. The first covers medical contexts; here, chapters provide commentary and critical analysis of the history of medicine, medicalisation, pharmaceuticalisation, services and care, medical technology, diagnosis, screening, personalised medicine, and complementary and alternative medicine. The second part covers life contexts; chapters include a range of life contexts that have implications for health, including gender, sexuality, reproduction, disability, ethnicity, indigeneity, inequality, ageing, and dying. The third part covers shifting contextual domains; chapters consider contemporary areas of life that are rapidly changing, including bioethics, digital health, migration, medical travel, geography and "place", commercialisation, globalisation, and climate change. The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Issues in Health and Illness is a key contemporary reference text for scholars, students, researchers, and professionals across disciplines, including sociology, psychology, anthropology, geography, medicine, public health, and health science.

Cultivating a sense of existential meaning is identified in psychological literature as an important factor in preventing illness, in promoting health, and in successfully adapting to life?s changing circumstances (resiliency as well as recovery). A lack of this sense of meaning, which the editors refer to as ?existential vacuum?, can form the basis of such disorders and diseases as neurosis, depression, aggression, suicide ideation, and substance abuse. Scholars have studied these relationships for years. But new developments in the field and results of recent qualitative analyses have led to a new focus on how people experience the world and draw meaning from ordinary life. Based on their research over the last ten years, the editors write, ?Existential meaning plays a crucial role in moderating the effects of stress oh physical health and psychological well-being?The role of existential meaning at different stages of life, and at points of transition between stages, has much to teach us about optimal human development across the life span.? The editors have organized the book into three sections. In the first they and their contributors lay out the foundational models and definitions that are current in the study of existential meaning. Part two emphasizes research methodology, particularly issues relevant to investigation and measurement of questions and experiences of personal meaning (clinical and sociological). The third section offers specific applications of the theories, models, and methodologies presented in the first two parts.

The discipline of health psychology has grown rapidly in recent years, during a period of increasing debate about the nature of psychology and of science in general. Health psychology has tended to adopt the dominant positivist approaches and methods of its parent discipline, but questions are increasingly being asked about the relevance and legitimacy of these theoretical and methodological frameworks for health psychology, and there is growing interest in developing alternative approaches. One such alternative is to apply the theories and methods of qualitative research to health psychology. Qualitative Health Psychology examines a wide variety of qualitative research issues and considers their relevance for health psychology. The editors examine some of the main theoretical perspectives underlying qualitative research, such as discourse analysis and narrative research, and consider the social context and embodiment of health and illness. They also cover some of the practical issues involved in conducting qualitative research, including interviewing, and focus particularly on issues of research with different populations, such as children and the terminally ill. In addition, the book considers a range of analytic issues and specific analytic approaches such as grounded theory, action research and the evaluation of qualitative methods. Persuasive and compelling, Qualitative Health Psychology provides s strong case for the use of a qualitative framework in health psychology and is essential reading for anyone interested in the research or practice of health psychology today.