Howard S. Friedman (Ed.),The Oxford Handbook of Health Psychology

Howard S. Friedman (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Health Psychology , Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, 2014; 915 pp.: 9780195342819 (hbk), 9780199365074 (pbk), £51.52 (pbk), £99.12 (hbk)

Reviewed by: Gareth Davies, Humanities, University of the Highlands & Islands, Scotland, UK

The Oxford Handbook of Health Psychology has six parts, made up of 36 chapters. The book is aimed at practitioners, postgraduate students, and researchers in the field. Whilst it considers the background and the development of health psychology, it also considers some of the significant contemporary issues and debates for health psychologists and looks at these in the context of critical examinations of cutting edge research.

Part one: background history and methods

Part one consists of five chapters covering the development of the discipline of health psychology. Its intellectual roots, its development, and its contemporary form as a discipline, including its role in the development of interventions to enhance physical and mental health, and an examination of some of the challenges faced by the discipline, are covered in the first chapter. These include allocating finite resources to healthcare and some of the factors that underpin these decisions.

The first chapter considers the development of the discipline, including a look at the philosophical underpinnings that have ultimately led to the modern discipline we see today. As a discipline firmly rooted in research, understanding some of the approaches by health psychologists when measuring health behaviour is essential. The second chapter in this section deals with this, with the third chapter following naturally from this. Arguably, the goal of health psychology is the development of interventions to improve both mental and physical health, and the fourth chapter looks at intervention design. The fifth and final chapter in this section examines some of the greatest challenges to the practice of health psychology: the uncertainty of operating in a human environment where competition for finite resources both from within and without the healthcare sector are exacerbated by, for example, the anxiety of patients and the uncertainty of medical diagnoses.

Part two: core concepts in health psychology

The second part of the book is made up of eight chapters, which deal with the core concepts in health psychology.

The first chapter in this section considers homeostasis and the internal and external worlds of the individual. This is clearly a significant and important concept. The section then moves on to more specific concepts such as the notion of psychoneuroimmunology. Perhaps a more familiar concept in health psychology is covered in the third chapter in this section (chapter eight overall): stress and coping. This is one of the most widely studied concepts in health psychology and, strangely, is considered after psychoneuroimmunology. Social support is reviewed in the fourth chapter. Again, this is a fundamental concept in health psychology. Perhaps more familiar to a North American readership, the concept of self-healing is the subject of the fifth chapter. A more familiar concept, adjustment to chronic disease, is considered next. The focus here is on the progress and review of current research. The seventh chapter in this section focuses on the way we compare our self-perceptions to a range of other models and the implications this has for physical health. The final chapter in the section deals with the important concept of perceptions of health and illness.

Part three: core issues in clinical health

This part consists of 10 chapters dealing with some of the most important core issues in clinical health. Topics such as communication are at the heart of these chapters and the theme runs through several of them, including physician–patient communication, expressive writing, and communication in family units. Other chapters deal with issues surrounding specific conditions such as HIV/AIDS, cancer, and transplantation.

Part four: health behavior change

The contents of this section will be familiar to most heath psychologists, but will an essential guide for students of the discipline, as health behavior changes is one of the most fundamental aspects of health psychology.

The first of the seven chapters in this section offers an overview of the main theoretical concepts in health psychology. These are grounded in self-regulation and self-efficacy. The main theories commonly clustered in the social-cognitive domain are covered. The second chapter deals with the complex issue of theoretical approaches to health behaviour change and considers them in the context of interventions to change behavior. The next chapter considers risks from expert and lay perspectives, considered across the lifespan. Concepts such as optimistic bias are also examined. The fourth chapter looks at physical activity and health from a research perspective. Again, this is considered across the lifespan. It is examined through the light of different factors that act as facilitators and barriers to exercise. After smoking, one of the primary factors that affects our health is alcohol, and this is considered in the next chapter. The health outcomes, especially amongst the young, are addressed, including unintentional injury and unsafe sexual practices. Obesity is the subject of the next chapter, and this perhaps reflects the North American context of the book. However, this issue is increasingly important in other regions and we may well be able to draw positively on the North American experience. This section of the book finishes with an examination of dispositional optimism.

Part five: population and sociocultural issues

The penultimate part of the handbook looks at population and sociocultural issues. As the reader may expect, this is grounded in the North American context and some of the five chapters are specifically focused in that regard.

Community health is considered through the lens of both research and intervention. The next chapter deals with Latino health, and this is very much USA-focused. However, there may be some parallels with populations within other populations that have different health outcomes and mortality. Change in health indicators for central and eastern Europe are considered next and, as in the previous chapter, the health differences between populations such as eastern and western Germany are discussed. Meditation and health and its potential effect on well-being are the subject of the next chapter. The penultimate chapter of the book looks at what we might learn from studying non-human primates. Psychologists have studied non-human primates in many and varied ways and it stands to reason that we may be able to learn about our health behaviour from studying their social relationships.

Part six: conclusion

The handbook is very much focused on the USA context, with only eight of the 61 contributors coming from outside the USA. While many of the concepts covered in the book are universal, there are factors such as the funding of healthcare provision which do not cross over from the USA to, for example, a UK context. However, other USA-specific issues such as Latino health may well offer insights into the reasons why differences in health outcomes and mortality exist between populations in the UK; for example, the lower life expectancy of populations in Scotland’s Central Belt.