PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

C G Helman

Publications and source records attributed to C G Helman.

14 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1995

The body image in health and disease: exploring patients' maps of body and self.

Patient education in chronic diseases should always take into account the many maps--individual, cultural and medical--that patients have of their own bodies, in both health and disease. Physicians should become explorers, working in co-operation with patients and their families to understand their perceptions of body and self--and whether or not these are compatible with medical interventions.

Attitude to Health↗
PubMed1991

The family culture: a useful concept for family practice.

Each family can be regarded as a unique small-scale society, with its own internal organization and view of the world or family culture. A crucial aspect of each family culture are those beliefs, behaviors, habits, and life-styles that are either protective of health or pathogenic, depending on the context. For family physicians, the insights of medical anthropology are useful in understanding the role of family culture in health, illness, and medical care.

Anthropology, Cultural↗
PubMed1987

Heart disease and the cultural construction of time: the type A behaviour pattern as a Western culture-bound syndrome.

For over 20 years, the image of the coronary-prone 'type A' individual, ambitious, competitive, hostile, and time-obsessed has been a familiar feature of cardiology literature, and of popular discourse on health. A closer examination of the moral content of this model, suggests that it is based on a binary classification of social values type A (bad) and type B (good). But the type A individual is also a figure of moral ambiguity, embodying many of the inherent contradictions of Western industrial society. In particular, his anti-social behaviour is rewarded in money, or status by that same society. The paper proposes a model of symbolic inversion, whereby these social contradictions are resolved for both victim, and society by his development of coronary heart disease. The type A behaviour pattern can be regarded as a 'culture-bound syndrome', particularly of middle-aged, middle-class men, and one which condenses key concerns and behavioural norms of the society. As a diagnostic category, it can only be understood in the social context of the industrialized world and against the background of the unique social and symbolic characteristics of Western time.

Coronary Disease↗
PubMed1985

Psyche, soma, and society: the social construction of psychosomatic disorders.

This pilot-study examines the self-perceptions, and explanatory models, of 42 patients with either respiratory or gastrointestinal psychosomatic disorders. For several reasons, these disorders comprise an anomalous category within the biomedical model. It is suggested that clinicians explain their chronic, unpredictable course by 'psychologization'--shifting responsibility for etiology, exacerbations or therapeutic failure to patients' emotions, personality, or lifestyle. Evidence is presented that psychologization is socially constructed, in clinical encounters over time. Patients respond to this process by reifying pathogenic emotions, personality traits, or malfunctioning body parts, and thus separating them from an idealized concept of the social self. It is also suggested that patients with gastrointestinal or respiratory conditions differ in their self-perceptions and explanatory models: a proportion of patients in each group organize their experiences around a central natural symbol--respiration or digestion/excretion. These 2 images link physiological experiences to concepts of pathogenic emotions or personality, physical weakness, and types of social relationships.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1984

The role of context in primary care.

All doctor-patient interactions take place in a specific context-a particular physical, social or cultural setting. The important role of these contexts in doctor-patient communication, diagnosis and treatment is discussed, with reference to both hospital medicine and general practice.

Communication↗
PubMed1981

Patients' perceptions of psychotropic drugs.

This pilot study examined patients' perceptions of, and attitudes towards, psychotropic drug-taking. Fifty chronic users of benzodiazepines in two Middlesex group practices were interviewed, and data were collected on their knowledge, experience and expectations of these drugs.The data suggest that psychotropic drug-taking has become an important part of many patients' self-image and of their social relationships, and that these factors should be taken into account when dealing with psychological dependence on psychotropic drugs.

Adult↗
PubMed1981

Disease versus illness in general practice.

Two different, though interrelated, conceptions of ill-health - disease and illness - are described. Recent literature on this disease/illness model is reviewed, and the value of this approach to general practice is shown.

Attitude to Health↗
PubMed1978

"Feed a cold, starve a fever"--folk models of infection in an English suburban community, and their relation to medical treatment.

This paper outlines a widely-held conception of illness, related to perceived changes in body temperature--'Chills' and 'Colds' on one hand, 'Fevers' on the other---in an English suburban community on the outskirts of London. The relationship between this folk model, and that of the local family physicians is analysed, to show how biomedical treatment and concepts, particularly the germ theory of disease, far from challenging the folk model, actually reinforce it. Remedies which cannot be scientifically and biomedically justified are nevertheless prescribed by the physicians to meet their patients' need to 'make sense' of biomedical treatment in terms of their folk model of illness. At the interface between physicians and patient, biomedical diagnoses and treatment are more 'negotiable' than previously realised--and this has important implications for the delivery of health care.

Anti-Bacterial Agents↗