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Health Anxiety and the Quest for Safety critically examines how psychological and sociocultural processes influence anxiety and safety-seeking behaviour concerning perceived health risks in globalised information societies. It provides insights into how people respond to uncertainty and perceived threats to their body and health in the 'age of anxiety'.
In examining the history of health anxiety, the author explores fluctuations in concepts, highlighting the power dynamics, uncertainties, and biased social and scientific attitudes in the background. The chapters offer a critical analysis of contemporary safety-seeking strategies, including online health information searches, fad diets, self-tracking, body image interventions, and the pursuit of personal meaning and well-being. Additionally, the book investigates how sociocultural influences can induce guilt about one's body and health, promote self-blame, or foster stigmatising attitudes, while emphasising how the emergence of 'psy-culture', pop psychology, and digital tools may enhance health empowerment but also generate health-related anxieties and deepen inequalities. As a critical reflection on prevailing individualistic paradigms, the work also considers concepts that emphasise resonance and connectedness.
This book is valuable reading for clinical and health psychologists, critical social scientists, researchers, and students in the health sciences, as well as practitioners in all healthcare settings, psychotherapists, and communication specialists.
List of contents
1. Anxiety in a Multidimensional Framework 2. Health Concerns in Risk Societies 3. From Hypochondria to Health Empowerment 4. Psychosocial Challenges of Monitoring the Anxious Body 5. Uncertainties Around Healthy Eating 6. Responsibility and Blame in Health and Illness 7. Dilemmas of Body Positivity and Health Concerns 8. Finding Safety in Meaning and Connection
About the author
Márta Csabai is a clinical and health psychologist and a full professor at the Institute of Psychology at Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Budapest, Hungary.
