Patients’ Perceptions of Their Illness

Abstract

A patient constructs a cognitive representation of his or her illness that guides behavior aimed at managing that illness. Patients’ models of their illness share a common structure made up of beliefs about the cause of an illness, the symptoms that are part of the condition, the consequences of the illness for the patient’s life, how the illness is controlled or cured, and how long the illness will last. Illness perceptions can be measured using questionnaires and also assessed in patients’ drawings, which readily show how an illness is visualized. Illness perceptions change rapidly in response to diagnostic results and have been associated with emotional distress, recovery, and disability, as well as with treatment-related behavior such as adherence. Interventions based around changing inaccurate or unhelpful perceptions of illness are an important emerging area of health psychology.