Understanding Health Attitudes and Behavior

Individual attitudes and behavior related to health and disease are major components of clinical encoun-ters. These factors shape lifestyle, presentation of symptoms, access to patient care, interactions between patients and physicians, adherence to medical advice, and response to treatment. Health attitudes and behavior may range from anxiety and worry about illness to various forms of denial, such as delay of seek-ing care and lack of adherence to treatment. When attitudes result in health-damaging behavior, they may be particularly difficult to understand and become a source of frustration to both physicians and patients. Devising appropriate responses by health care providers may contribute to improving final outcomes and decrease health care costs. In particular, health behavior is likely to play a major role in the process of con-valescence, in self-management of chronic conditions, in determining a state of recovery, and whenever a rehabilitation process is involved. Understanding the spectrum of health attitudes and behavior is also cru-cial for motivating people to make beneficial changes (lifestyle medicine), as well as for implementing safety procedures in the community.(c) 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. center dot The American Journal of Medicine (2023) 136:252-259