chronic diseases v. infectious diseases & psychology
April 21st, 2010An interested coworker was asking me yesterday why psychology is considered “useful” in chronic disease prevention but not in infectious diseases. I thought this might make a good, quick blog topic. The quick answer is that chronic diseases (like cancer, for example) are highly influenced by lifestyle and behavioral choices, where as infectious diseases typically aren’t. For example, people continue to smoke, overeat, refuse to exercise, etc. (lifestyle choices) even though they know these are significant risk factors for cancer. So why do people do it? That’s where the psychology part comes in. The answer of course is not so simple to understand what motivates people to self-destructive behavior, but that is where psychology and public health begin to overlap.
On the other hand, infectious diseases like influenza for example (the common flu) really don’t have so much to do with your lifestyle choices, at least not significantly. You can do “all the right things” and still get the flu. Infectious diseases are more determined by biology than psychology, you can’t always control whether or not you will be exposed to a virus (an infectious disease) but you can control lifestyle choices that lead to chronic diseases.
