Illness Behavior and Care Seeking

Abstract

Illness behavior, the belief that one is threatened by illness and in need of protective action, including medical care, is typically initiated by changes in somatic experience and physical function that are interpreted as symptoms of an underlying threat to health. The psychology of interpretation involves the matching of symptoms to schemas of illness threats; the latter being the product of personal experience, including efforts at symptom management, observations of and communication from others, and media exposure. The most powerful instigators of illness behavior and care seeking are the specific attributes of symptoms, e.g., their duration, severity, and perceived meaning i.e., whether they fit schemata defining them as indicators of a familiar, minor affliction versus a life threatening disease. The conviction that one is sick and the overuse of medical care in the absence of objective signs of disease, i.e., ‘abnormal illness behavior,’ may be sustained by adaptive advantages intrinsic to the sick role. Differentiation between illness behavior and behavior to enhance health, ignores the identity of the social-psychological processes underlying both. Excessive focus on the costs of abnormal illness behavior slights the health risk entailed by under-response to symptoms of life threatening conditions.