What Is Illness Perception?

Few people manage to go through life without getting sick. Many sicknesses are fleeting and really nothing to worry about, while others are serious and have long-lasting effects. Disease itself isn’t linked to perception; it can be pathologically identified in an objective way. It’s important to recognize, however, that the way an individual perceives physical or emotional discomfort is not as easily measured. Illness perception might reflect cultural beliefs, psychological needs, or something else that may have little to do with measurable disease.

An understanding of a patient’s illness perception is necessary to help in a diagnosis. This can be difficult because perception is highly subjective, and there's no absolute method of measuring it, either from individual to individual, or even within one person’s perspective through time. Researchers have determined that reducing illness perception to its most basic elements can help patients describe what it is they are feeling. By organizing these components into a structure, patients can reconstruct the architecture of their beliefs about their illnesses.

The first area of focus is identity. This component contains what the patient believes is true of the disease, including cause and symptoms. A patient who lists a number of experiences such as confusion, nausea, and anxiety as symptomatic of a particular disease may be more likely to experience those symptoms while simultaneously failing to recognize others that are just as likely to be part of the cluster.

The element of cause indicates what the patient believes was the initiating factor. For example, some diseases are genetic, while others are triggered by a virus. Other causes that patients might identify include allergic responses to the environment, emotional stress, or physical damage. Cause can have social or cultural contexts; some patients are more willing to accept a cause of illness or spiritual imbalance, for example, that others.

The patient’s sense of timeline describes the third component. This area is concerned with the perceived illness’s initial appearance, its trajectory, and its conclusion. Patients with the illness perception that a sickness is or will become chronic are less likely to recover from it quickly than those who believe it is temporary.

The fourth area of concern is consequences. Patients whose illness perception leads them to believe that it will have a profound and negative effect on the quality of life are more likely to become discouraged or depressed than those who don’t have this particular perception. Patients who, in fact, do have a serious disorder but lack a strong sense of consequences might be better able to fight it or less equipped to handle the effects.

The final category is cure-control. This element of illness perception is concerned with the degree to which the patient believes a cure is possible. This can range from a fully negative position in which there is no hope of a cure to a fully positive one, in which the patient firmly believes a cure will be found.