ABSTRACT
This chapter examines possibilities and integrates empirical information where it is available. Attachment is considered here as one of the many factors that interact to promote health and disease. Attachment may be implicated in physical health through direct influences on physiological organization and health behaviour, as well as through indirect effects on personality traits, attitudes and competencies that play a role in health behaviour. Both speculation and evidence suggest that secure attachment is beneficial to health, whereas insecure attachment is likely to increase the risk of disease. Thus insecure attachment contributes to physiological dysregulation both directly and via poor behavioural stragies for managing stress. In turn, each of these factors increases vulnerability to disease. Physiological dysregulation does so more or less directly by activating genetic vulnerabilities, whereas poor stress management does so via maladaptive health/illness behaviours that increase exposure to disease risk factors. Disease, in turn, has effects on both attachment and health/illness behaviours.
