Health Anxiety and the Quest for Safety by Csabai, Márta;

Short description:

This book critically examines how psychological and socio-cultural 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'. 

Long description:

Health Anxiety and the Quest for Safety critically examines how psychological and socio-cultural 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.

Márta Csabai’s Health Anxiety and the Quest for Safety provides a critical and timely examination of how health anxieties develop and are managed in contemporary societies. The book traces historical shifts in concepts of health anxiety and offers fresh perspectives on issues ranging from online health information seeking and digital self-tracking to food anxieties and body image debates. By highlighting the interplay of individual, cultural, and systemic factors, Csabai delivers a nuanced account that will be useful to scholars, practitioners, and students concerned with health and well-being.

Prof. Peter J. Schulz, Professor of Communication Theories and Health Communication, University of Lugano, Switzerland

Table 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