Psychological Insights for Understanding Covid-19 and Health

With specially commissioned introductions from international experts, the Psychological Insights for Understanding COVID-19 series draws together previously published chapters on key themes in psychological science that engage with people’s unprecedented experience of the pandemic.

In this volume on health, Dominika Kwasnicka and Robbert Sanderman introduce chapters that explore the crucial topics of health behaviour change, wellbeing, stress, and coping. They highlight the key role digital health technologies can play in how we manage health conditions, and how we facilitate change to help individuals manage stressful situations such as physical isolation, job loss, and financial strain during the COVID-19 pandemic. The volume also offers an important overview of environmental and policy-based approaches to health behaviour change and addresses the highly relevant issues of identity and trust and how they shape the health of individuals, communities, and society.

Highlighting theory and research on these key topics germane to the global pandemic, the Psychological Insights for Understanding COVID-19 series offers thought-provoking reading for professionals, students, academics, and policymakers concerned with psychological consequences of COVID-19 for individuals, families, and society.

Dr Dominika Kwasnicka is Research Fellow at the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Digital Technology to Transform Chronic Disease Outcomes, University of Melbourne, Australia, and SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poland. She is a behavioural scientist with diverse interests in health psychology, digital health, and research methods focusing on individuals.

Prof Dr Robbert Sanderman is Professor in Health Psychology at both the University of Groningen and at the University of Twente, The Netherlands. His research focuses on psychological and social adaptation to chronic life-threatening illness and on the use of psychological interventions, including eHealth tools.

The editors lead - together with others – the Open Digital Health initiative (www.opendigitalhealth.org) that promotes reusing open digital health solutions across contexts and settings.