Health Psychology

In today’s sick world, the application of psychological research and methods to issues about and around health could not be more important. Health psychologists pursue ambitious goals, including: the promotion and maintenance of health; the prevention and management of illness; the improvement of healthcare systems; and the formulation of rational health policies. And they seek to understand dizzyingly difficult questions, such as: how do people adapt to chronic illness? What factors influence healthy eating? How is stress linked to heart disease? And, why do so many patients ignore medical advice and prescriptions?

As research in and around health psychology burgeons as never before, this new four-volume collection from Routledge’s acclaimed Critical Concepts in Psychology series meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of a rapidly growing and ever more complex corpus of literature. Edited by two leading scholars, the collection gathers foundational and canonical work, together with innovative and cutting-edge applications and interventions.

With a full index, together with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editors, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Health Psychology will be particularly useful as a one-stop database allowing scattered and often fugitive material to be easily located. It will also be welcomed as a crucial tool permitting rapid access to less familiar―and sometimes overlooked―texts. For researchers and advanced students, it is a vital one-stop research and reference resource.

Daryl O'Connor is Professor of Psychology at the University of Leeds. Professor Rory O'Connor is the Chair in Health Psychology and Head of Mental Health and Wellbeing at the University of Glasgow.