Abstract
There is often considerable discrepancy between the symptoms which patients present and the underlying pathology (Mechanic, 1962; Skelton, this volume). Several studies suggest that as many as 60% of visits to general practioners have no medical basis (Cummings, 1986), while substantial proportions of patients with clinically significant symptoms fail to consult a medical doctor (White, Williams, & Greenberg, 1961). As a consequence, a distinction is made with increasing frequency between disease and illness, with the former referring to strictly pathological conditions evident in a particular patient and the latter referring to the entire cluster of symptoms which he or she presents, regardless of origin (Cott & Pavloski, 1985). As the illness, by definition, has broader behavioral consequences than the disease, and as patients determine their degree of disability and their compliance with treatment regimens on the basis of their illness rather than their disease, it behooves us to understand the origin of patients’ symptomatic complaints. It is evident that understanding of the nondisease component of patients’ illnesses is fundamentally a psychological problem.
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Lacroix, J.M. (1991). Assessing Illness Schemata in Patient Populations. In: Skelton, J.A., Croyle, R.T. (eds) Mental Representation in Health and Illness. Contributions to Psychology and Medicine. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9074-9_9
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