Health Psychology

Rating:
Summary: Where's Injury Risk Behavior?
Review: Although the coverage of typical behavioral medicine topics like stress, pain, and chronic diseaseis adequate, INJURY is the leading cause of death to children, adolescents and young adults and is poorly represented in examples and literature. The CDC recently released a bibliography of scientific literature on behavioral science approaches to unintentional injuries (accidents) that lists 800+ scientific articles addressing injury prevention interventions (cdc.gov/injury). This textbook does not discuss these studies or cite case examples of health psychology applied to injury prevention. Chronic disease and pain are not the only maladies helped by health psycholgists.

Rating:
Summary: Read Only If Required
Review: Shelley Taylor may be a well-respected researcher, but her skills as a textbook writer/educator leave much to be desired. She is primarily an academic social psychologist, and it shows-- there are very few clinical applications of the theory in the text. The book is very, very dry, repetitive, and (perhaps most importantly) it occasionally gives somewhat dated information. (This despite the fact that there was a delay in receiving my text because it was brand new!). I found the text to be somewhat condescending-- it attempts to make the information relevant to college/university students by discussing issues that our age group might identify with-- but I personally felt that Dr. Taylor has underestimated what undergraduates are capable of understanding. I also know that many, many other students in my health psych course disliked this text, and our instructor was even motivated enough to change texts for her next course!