The biomedical view of health, characterized by a focus on physical mechanisms and diseases and featuring a reductionist point of view which defines health as the absence of disease has long been replaced by a view that emphasizes the role played by sociocultural forces in the shaping of health (and illness) and related psychological experiences. In 1948, the World Health Organization (WHO) defined health as ‘a complete state of physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’, calling attention to the complexity and multidimensionality of the concept. Adding social well-being to the definition opened the way to conceptualizing the individual as a social being, part of bigger entity than his/her own body. Later, WHO (World Health Organization, 1982) referred to the importance of sociocultural factors by endorsing the following view: 

This section provides a brief overview of research conducted to examine cross-cultural differences or similarities in areas relevant to health psychology: the experience of different medical conditions such as menopause and pain, health-care seeking and doctor– patient relationship. While the literature on the role of sociocultural factors in health and illness is by no means limited to this list, the goal is to draw attention to the sociocultural nature of health and illness and to issues typically considered individually driven.

Sociocultural environments play an important role in how health and illness are experienced. Psychological responses to physical experiences such menopause or pain, understandings of causes and consequences of disease, effectiveness of health messages, use of social support and its impact on physiological responses and many others, vary as a function of the characteristics of the sociocultural environments into which individuals are socialized. Evidence suggests that sociocultural factors can shape psychological constructs such as illness cognitions, attitudes and intentions – key constructs in such models of illness and health behaviour as the self-regulation model of illness cognition and behaviour and the theory of planned behaviour. To date, most health and illness models in psychology are designed and tested in a Western cultural context and are therefore likely to be biased. More research is certainly required as the incorporation of sociocultural factors into existing health models can contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the moderating factors that determine how illness cognitions are shaped or when behaviour is likely to change. It is time to collate the vast amount of knowledge accumulated in the hitherto disconnected subfields of cultural and health psychology and to explore the degree to which theories and models developed in the West can be used to understand health and illness-related psychological experiences elsewhere.