ABSTRACT
The potential influences of family factors on health and illness are numerous and varied. In the foregoing chapters, many important issues have been reviewed and discussed by authors to provide an updated literature review and to point to future directions for a field that is currently in a seminal stage of development. In the initial section, health cognitions and prevention were discussed. In the second section, family and marital factors in chronic illnesses were covered. Finally, intervention issues were addressed in the last section. In utilizing this course of illness organization it was hoped that adequate coverage of this large domain would be insured so that initial steps could be taken to identify and define important elements in a new subdiscipline, family health psychology.
