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Subjective health and ill health‐related behaviour
Author(s) -
Lazar Anna,
Sandell Rolf,
Grant Johan
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
psychology and psychotherapy: theory, research and practice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.102
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 2044-8341
pISSN - 1476-0835
DOI - 10.1348/147608306x132955
Subject(s) - self rated health , psychology , personality , checklist , clinical psychology , affect (linguistics) , test (biology) , health care , medicine , gerontology , social psychology , paleontology , communication , economics , cognitive psychology , biology , economic growth
Objective. The aim of this study was to investigate the relation between self‐rated health measures and ill healthrelated behaviour. Design. The study design was based on a self‐report questionnaire taken for three consecutive years. Method. Path analysis was used to test the relations between (a) The Self‐rated Health Scale (SRH) and the General Symptom Index (GSI) from the Symptom Checklist‐90 (SCL‐90), and (b) self‐reports on sick leave, health care utilization and medication, in a group of 155 persons who had terminated psychotherapeutic treatment the year before our three‐year panel survey. To investigate the potential moderating function of ongoing psychotherapeutic treatment, we repeated each test in a group of 152 patients in the midst of psychotherapeutic treatment. Results. Only weak or zero relations were found between the self‐rated health measures and ill health‐related behaviour. The multi‐group analyses indicated between‐group differences in model fit. The few significant specific between‐group differences all concerned autoregressive relations. Conclusions. Subjective health did not predict ill health‐related behaviour. Ongoing psychotherapeutic treatment did not affect the predictive value of subjective health variables. The weak relations found in the current study illuminate paradoxical outcome differences between subjective well‐being and ill health‐related behaviour. Our findings are discussed in the light of cultural and personality factors.