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Why Do People Term An Illness To Be Either Physical Or Psychological: Is ...

WHY DO PEOPLE TERM AN ILLNESS TO BE EITHER PHYSICAL OR PSYCHOLOGICAL: IS THERE A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PUBLIC CAUSAL ATTRIBUTES OF FUNCTIONAL SOMATIC SYNDROMES AND THEIR HEALTH LOCUS OF CONTROL?
Introduction
According to attribution theory, individuals faced with unexpected, stressful or life threatening situations, such as a chronic illness, usually search for causal explanations regarding the situation and Sensky (1997) believes that patient responses to physical symptoms are influenced by these personal beliefs.This has been confirmed in a large body of literature covering a wide array of medical conditions (Sensky, 1997). These causal explanations may help to explain why individuals with serious illnesses vary greatly in their adaptation to these illnesses (Roesch and Weiner, 2001) and may also influence when and whether an individual is likely to seek professional medical help, subsequent attitudes to their prognosis and their behaviours following treatment and the return of good health (Sensky, 1997).It is therefore important to study the effects that personal beliefs play in a medical context as this may have a utility in improving patient health care. Consequently, this study aims to examine why the same illnesses have different attributions of cause. The possibility that labelling is involved in the attribution process will be assessed and in addition it is aimed to examined whether attribution is related to health locus of control (LOC) orientation.
Causal attributions are common to all aspects of life and the activity tends to be elicited more by failure and negative events (such as illness) than for success and positive events (Lau, 1984).Specifically, attributions are post-hoc interpretations of the causes of the illness or condition (Roesch and Weiner, 2001).It is estimated that 70-95% of patients report causal attributions about their illnesses (Turnquist, Harvey and Anderson, 1988), although this is dependent on the type of illness experienced. People also generally believe that diseases are the result of multiple causes or ‘attributions', even in cases where the disease is known to be the consequence of a single cause and there is frequent discord between the real and attributed sources of cause (Shiloh, Rashuk-Roesenthal & Benyamini, 2002). Kelley (1967) was the first person to associate attribution with a sense of control. Specifically, he argued that individuals make these causal attributions in order to reduce individual discomfort and to increase feelings of control.
Bishop (1987) argued that attributions relating to illness should be split into those with have psychological and physiological causes. Types of causal attributions for illness have been categorised in more depth, by Shiloh, Rashuk-Roesenthal and Benyamini (2002). They examined causal attributions for illness in a sample of 129 women and 71 men from a broad age range.

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