Social Psychology of Health : The Issues and Concerns in India

The idea of the book germinated in the symposium on ‘Social Psychology of Health: Issues and Concerns of India’, which was a part of XX Annual Convention of the National Academy of Psychology (NAOP) India, organized in Jawaharlal Nehru University in December, 2011. Few papers in this book were earlier presented in the conference and few invited articles are contributed by experts in this nascent but growing sub-field of enquiry within social psychology. The chapters included in this book aim to propagate that large amount of the burden of disease can be understood as a product of societal factors, which pushes people towards health aversive behaviour. The chapters emphasize the need for understanding of disease and health care in Indian traditional system, well-being of women in Indian society, and the effectiveness of community health care systems. The book also covers various psycho-social approaches to handle HIV/AIDS pandemic in India and highlights factors that could make social marketing effective for public health care programmes and services. In addition, the book attempts to discuss the psycho-social issues of care giving, suicide etc. in Indian society. The content of the book will be helpful as supplementary reading for various courses on health psychology taught at undergraduate and postgraduate level in the colleges and universities across the country. The issues and concerns shared in the book may interest the health care practitioners and policy makers to think differently and rediscover the importance of social-psychological parameters in effective delivery of health services.