Novels as data: Health humanities and health psychology.

Ad A Kaptein

doi:10.1177/1359105321999107

Abstract

Novels represent a corpus of data that offers innovative opportunities for research and theory in health psychology. This article discusses how adding ‘health humanities’ to health psychology opens up a potentially rich domain for research and clinical application. The concept of ‘health humanities’ is discussed and put into a context of related fields. The concepts of ‘illness perceptions’ and ‘models of patient–health care provider interaction’ are used as illustrations. Applications are given, focusing on patients and their caregivers, health care providers and society at large (bibliotherapy and expressive writing). Suggestions for further development of the area are included.

Highlights

Health psychology is a relatively young area of scientific endeavor which enjoys a quite astonishing growth over the past decades (Quinn et al, 2020)
The advent of the biopsychosocial model which helped the development and growth of health psychology seems discernable in the shift from Medical Humanities to Health Humanities: ‘. . . the terminological shift from medical to health humanities underscores the crucial distinction between medicine and health’ (Jones et al, 2017, p. 933)
The emphasis within the Health Humanities domain on well-being rather than on the absence of disease, on all the participants in society rather than on health care providers, on social as well as individual determinants of health, reflects the points raised by Spicer and Chamberlain in their paper ‘Developing psychosocial theory in health psychology’ (1996) in this Journal

Summary

Introduction

Health psychology is a relatively young area of scientific endeavor which enjoys a quite astonishing growth over the past decades (Quinn et al, 2020). The rather recent introduction of the concept ‘Health Humanities’ reflects the growing impact of health psychology and related health and social sciences in this area: health humanities attempts to adopt a biopsychosocial view rather than a biomedical view, emphasizing the patient’s position, the experience of being ill and of living with a chronic illness; health humanities incorporates non-medical professionals in its remit (i.e. caregivers, patient representatives, (health) psychologists, etc.).

Results

Conclusion