BPS Core Textbooks Series
Developed in collaboration with the British Psychological Society
Mind-body link
An individual’s thoughts and emotions can affect their physical health and physical health can affect thoughts and emotions.
Humoral theory
An early explanation that imbalances of bodily humours (blood, phlegm black bile and yellow bile) caused disease.
Cartesian Dualism
Based on the views of Descartes that the mind and the body were separate, people’s thoughts and emotions could not affect physical health.
Life expectancy
An approximation of the age that an individual is expected to live to based on their biological sex and age.
Health literacy
Having the skills, knowledge and ability to fin, understand and use health information.
Morbidity
Having a disease or being ill.
Passve smoking
Inhaling others’ exhaled smoke from tobacco or the side-stream smoking of the tobacco.
Ethnocentric view
Tendency to think and interpret other cultures and healthcare practices as inferior to your own.
Spirit world
The belief that everything has a spirit, ancestors, the land, animals and that they are all connected to the individual.
Intergenerational trauma
Trauma and pain that is passed down from previous generations, e.g. colonisation. The trauma that affects those who did not experience the original event.
Health disparities
Differences in health outcomes between groups of people, caused by a range of different factors e.g. poverty, educational level, discrimination and colonisation.
Culturally appropriated
where the historically dominant culture takes over elements of a colonised culture, without understanding, respect or permission.
Health inequities
Unfair or unavoidable health differences that are caused by a range of factors e.g. poverty, educational level, culture, ethnicity, colonisation, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation.
Cultural awareness
Learning general facts about the lives, behaviours and beliefs of cultural groups that are different to your own.
Cultural competence
Knowledge of the impact that social and cultural factors can have on people from the non-dominant culture and the importance of treating people with fairly and with respect.
Cultural safety
The ability to recognise and reflect on power imbalances to ensure that people are safe from discriminatory actions, attitudes and judgements