Health, Illness and Care [antikvár]

Foreword Modem medical training - which every medical university strives to secure it for its students - does not exist without behavioral sciences in the theoretical and practical phases of medical training. Knowledge and skill of behavior sciences, under the auspices of training groups and units, emerging in the fringe areas of several disciplines convey the wisdom of behavior, an area previously overshadowed by the wisdom of structure and flmction, to participants of graduate and postgraduate training. Of all relevant disciplines, medical psychology is the major one which represents the primus inter pares principle, at least in our way of thinking. The explanation lies in the very fact that our subject, applied psychology, includes the psychological knowledge and skills indispensable for health promotion, prevention, understanding complex mechanisms of the process of becoming ill, success of medical practice and rehabilitation, and their realization. Our textbook does not wish to present a comprehensive coverage of medical psychology for several reasons. Firstly, it is an incredibly huge task for a handbook, and secondly, to our utmost satisfaction, books on general psychology, each one offering a well-stmctured review are available. The present textbook is based on a different pedagogical approach: it is organized around selected problems of preventive and curative medicine, thereby describing changes in health status and associated psychological problems which influence medical practice. All textbooks are context - dependent in content, strncmre and emphasis. Several elements of context have played an important role in the case of this work as well. The first element is the area whose most important theoretical and practical aspects the present textbook is intended to review. This is where we faced the first serious obstacles. Medical psychology, a discipline of applied psychology, is considered by many as a subject whose boundaries have not been clearly defined yet, and which is in the phase of evolution. Others hold the view that it no longer exists, because it has merged partly with neuro-psychology and partly with health psychology. As active