Health, just world beliefs and coping style preferences in patients of complementary and orthodox medicine

Adrian Furnham and Rachael Beard

Social Science & Medicine, 1995, vol. 40, issue 10, 1425-1432

Abstract: This study was designed to compare health and Just World Beliefs, coping style preferences and the mental health of a group of patients that utilize complementary medicine (CM), a group that exclusively use orthodox medicine (OM) and a mixed group who use both. Each participant filled out a questionnaire consisting of four sections: a measure of health beliefs which attributed certain factors to the state of their current health and to their capacity to become healthier in the future; a measure of the extent of their Belief in a Just World; a measure of coping style preference when faced with a threatening situation; and a measure of mental health. The results, co-varying out demographic factors, showed differences between the group yielded significant differences on the beliefs about future health, with the CM group scoring higher than the OM group. There were no differences in coping styles, Just World Beliefs or mental health between the three groups. The results were discussed in relation to explanations for differences in illness behaviour, specifically the reasons for choosing complementary therapies against orthodox therapies for the treatment of illness.

Keywords: health; coping; style; Just; World; Beliefs; complementary; medicine (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1995
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(94)00263-S
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:40:y:1995:i:10:p:1425-1432

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().