Including Illness Behavior in the Assessment of Endocrine Patients

摘要

Me- T chanic and Volkart in the 1960s and refers to the ways in which individuals experience, perceive, evaluate and respond to their own health status (1). Accordingly, behavioral responses to the same illness or the same phys- ical symptom may vary widely among subjects and greatly affect the disease course and outcome. In past decades, important lines of research have been concerned with ill- ness perception, coping, risk behavior, attendance at med- ical facilities, treatment-seeking behavior, and treatment adherence. They have, however, mostly investigated single aspects separately. We have recently suggested that the concept of illness behavior may provide a unifying frame- work to observations and findings that would otherwise remain scattered and unrelated in the medical literature (1). Aspects of illness behavior that have important clinical implications have been investigated in the setting of dia- betes but have been otherwise understudied in endocrine disorders. Some issues are worth considering to improve effectiveness in the longitudinal management of endocrine patients.