ABSTRACT
This chapter gives a brief overview and history of the field, summarizes the major areas of research, and considers the relationship of health psychology to other disciplines investigating psycho-social aspects of health and illness. Psychology is a discipline that provides methods, concepts and theories for understanding the experience and the behavior of individuals in any situation. Health psychology is what results when the specifics of health problems and health system settings are superimposed as the task environment. In terms of numbers of individuals affected, perhaps the most significant area of health psychology is in research on psychological aspects of reproductive functioning. Psychologists are only beginning to turn their attention to attitudes of health care providers, to the stress in the organizations of the health system, to the implications of psychophysiological limits on human capabilities for the operation of the health system as a whole.
