ILLNESS AND ILLNESS BEHAVIOR

DEFINITION- ILLNESS:

Illness is a is the reaction of the body to the disease, i.e. feeling of being sick, an experience of poor health, which is entirely personal, and is described by the Individual

ILLNESS BEHAVIOR

Illness behavior refers to the actions exhibited by an individual who feels unwell for the purpose of defining their state of health and obtaining physical or emotional relief from their perceived Illness

STAGES OF ILLNESS BEHAVIOR

SYMPTOM EXPERIENCE

• Physical Experience: This indicates that there is something wrong in the patient as pain
• Cognitive Experience: It is interpreted based on the physical manifestations i.e the severity, the type and previous personal experiences or knowledge about the symptom like pain
• Emotional Experience: This includes the emotional experience of the symptoms as fear, concern and anxiety.

STAGES IN SYMPTOM EXPERIENCE

• Self Denial: Tendency to delay seeking treatment
• Self Medication: Some persons consider taking self Medication
• Signs and symptoms:
  • Sign: It is an objective measurable change of physiologic functioning detectable using diagnostic procedures
  • Symptoms: Symptoms are inherently subjective and cannot be easily quantified (measured)
• Types of Illness:
  • Acute Illness: It is a rapid onset of symptom that is relatively present for a short duration of time approximately less than 6 weeks
  • Chronic illness: It is a Illness present for a prolonged time period of more than 6 weeks with permanent change to body functioning and causes irreversible alterations in normal anatomy and physiology.

ASSUMPTION OF SICK ROLE

• Seeking Information and advice for relief of symptoms
• Sick individuals discuss regarding their sickness to others
• Sickness excuses from their normal role obligations called as provisional validation
• Individuals lay referral system as they are not confident on their own to decide that they are sick

Medical Care Contact:

• Legitimisation: Sick individuals contact a professional advice in health care system with permission to be sick from scientific source called as legitimisation.
• Denial Legitimisation: If a Legitimisation is denied the individual will return to his/her normal role activities
• Doctor shop: At this stage continues if the sick is not satisfied with initial physician diagnosis and treatment. Here the sick goes to seek next physician advice called doctor shopping.
• Treatment: Common treatment is medication with one or more prescription for the diseased.

Dependent patient stage:

• The sick individual become a patient
• Most patients claim that they adhere to physician treatment
• The family (lay referral system) continue to play an important role
• Most patients do not accept the patient’s role easily because they are reluctant to give up their normal roles which are also influenced by social and psychological barriers that affect the treatment process.

Recovery/Rehabilitation:

• Patient desires to achieve optimal health
• Both health care professionals and patient withdraw the legitimization
• Patient is expected to resume the normal roles
• In chronic condition/ disability, client accepts a long period of rehabilitation as a new role.