Do Young People's Illness Beliefs Affect Healthcare? A Systematic Review

doi:10.1016/j.jadohealth.2007.09.013

Journal of Adolescent Health

Volume 42, Issue 5, May 2008, Pages 436-449

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2007.09.013 Get rights and content

Abstract

A successful patient-centered approach in clinical practice implies an understanding of patients' experiences of illness, and therefore of their illness beliefs. This paper presents a systematic review of the literature on young people's common illness beliefs in contemporary Western societies and the extent to which these beliefs have been shown to affect healthcare.

Section snippets

Methods

Beliefs about illness stand in contrast to beliefs about health, and are influential in determining an individual's response to an episode of sickness [15], [16]. For these reasons, a decision was made not to study beliefs in the preventive arena, that is, beliefs about how to maintain good health, views on health risk behaviors, and health protective behaviors. In particular, the extensive literature on adolescents' perspectives on HIV prevention was not reviewed.

The search strategy is

Study selection

The combined database searches yielded 3846 potential titles pertaining to studies of young people's illness beliefs. The application of our exclusion criteria led to 82 full-text publications being retained for detailed examination. A search through the reference lists of key articles revealed five additional titles. Of the 87 publications that appeared to provide relevant information 24 finally met the inclusion criteria. Most were in English (21); others were in German (2) or Spanish (1).

Discussion

Young people in contemporary Western society have a wide variety of illness beliefs. As health education classes are often based on a biomedical model, biomedical explanations were expected to predominate among young people's beliefs. That this was not the case was a surprising finding suggesting that, just as adults, contemporary young people have broader views on health and illness than would have been expected in our scientific and technological era [8]. These beliefs appear to play an

Conclusion

Despite biomedical knowledge of illness, contemporary young people in Western societies have contrasting beliefs about illness that potentially affect healthcare. In contrast to the evidence of a relationship for adults, the extent to which beliefs affect young people's access and adherence to care remains uncertain. Entirely unexplored is the potential influence of young people's illness beliefs on the outcome of their health consultation, an important opportunity for future investigation.

Acknowledgments

Part of this review was undertaken while D. Haller was a research fellow at the Centre for Adolescent Health in Melbourne. D. Haller's fellowship was supported by Geneva University Hospital and the Swiss National Science Foundation. She was awarded an International Postgraduate Research Scholarship from The University of Melbourne. She is currently in receipt of a publication grant from Geneva University (Fonds Tremplin). None of these funding sources had any control or influence over the

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Review articleDo Young People's Illness Beliefs Affect Healthcare? A Systematic Review

Abstract

Section snippets

Methods

Study selection

Discussion

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

J Clin Epidemiol

Soc Sci Med

J Adolesc

Prev Med

Soc Sci Med

Lancet

J Psychosom Res

Promoting the healthy development of adolescents

JAMA

A 2020 vision of patient-centered primary care

J Gen Intern Med

Getting it right: why bother with patient-centred care?

Med J Aust

Concepts and a model for the comparison of medical systems as cultural systems

Soc Sci Med

Culture and clinical careFolk illness beliefs and behaviors and their implications for health care delivery

JAMA

A History of Medicine

The need for a new medical model: a challenge for biomedicine

Science

Health and Illness

Culture, Health and Illness

Perceptions of Health & Illness

Health care qualityIncorporating consumer perspectives

JAMA

Adolescent competence, psychological well-being, and self-assessed physical health

J Health Soc Behav

The socialization of youth into the American mental health belief system

J Health Soc Behav

Children's concepts of physical illness: a review and critique of the cognitive–developmental literature

Health Psychol

Concepts of health and illness: different constructs or variations on a theme?

Health Psychol

Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture

The health belief model and sick role behavior

Health Educ Monogr

Conceptualization and operationalization of perceived control

Handbook of Health Psychology

Representations, procedures and affects in illness self-regulation: a perceptual cognitive model

Promoting safety in adolescents

The Health Belief Model: a decade later

Health Educ Q

The relationship of disease severity, health beliefs and medication adherence among HIV patients

AIDS Care

Health beliefs among New Zealand adolescents

J Paediatr Child Health

Mental health in Spanish adolescents [in Spanish]

Psicothema

Review article
Do Young People's Illness Beliefs Affect Healthcare? A Systematic Review