Health beliefs across cultures: A review

Pages: 1859-1863
Surabhi Srivastava and Madhurima Pradhan (Department of Psychology, Lucknow University, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh)

Culture can be defined as way of living that encompasses ideas, thoughts and knowledge common to a group of people that influence their choices in various domains of life. Every culture has its peculiar ways of defining various aspects of life. In this context, health is no way different to other facets of life. How one defines health, illness, explores cause of illness and carves out the course of treatment is highly influenced by one’s culture. The objective of this paper is to review researches exploring health beliefs in context of culture. Main aspects of health that seemed to vary across cultures were found to be: illness beliefs, health communication, coping with illness, experience of physiological states, treatment seeking and patient-doctor relationship. The review of researches in this context, suggests that cultural factors can be relevant in holistic understanding of health of individuals.