Preface by Christine Stephens, Antonia Lyons, and Kerry Chamberlain

Health psychology is a very broad field concerned with applying psychological knowledge to all aspects of physical health and illness. Its development can be linked to a period of dissatisfaction and evolving critique of dominant biomedical frameworks of health and disease across the social sciences, including psychology. Psychologists became increasingly involved in issues of health and health care during the 1960s and 1970s, leading to the emergence of health psychology as a sub-discipline of psychology. Its establishment as a formal discipline was marked by the creation of Division 38 of the American Psychological Association in 1980.

Given the nature and prevailing directions of psychology and medicine at the time, it is no surprise that health psychology was dominated by positivist approaches to knowledge, an emphasis on ‘scientific’ research, and a strong focus on the individual. This focus on the individual and individual behaviour fits neatly within neoliberal perspectives and an ideology of health as the responsibility of an autonomous individual. As health psychology has grown and developed, different views and approaches to the field have emerged, including critical health psychology, which places emphasis on context, power, and social justice, considering macro-social processes that affect health and illness. This broader perspective is concerned with social, cultural, political, and economic influences as crucial in matters that include keeping people healthy, influencing health outcomes, accessing health care, and experiencing and recovering from illness. This approach has seen a major shift in research agendas, with qualitative research methods and methodologies being adopted and used more often, informed by social constructionism, feminism, and postmodernism. This approach has also been informed by theory and perspectives from other disciplines.

Many aspects of this broader development of health psychology were reflected in the burgeoning health psychology programme within the School of Psychology at Massey University. The initial foray into this area was the development of a single, broad and general, post-graduate course in 1990. However, a series of fortuitous appointments to the School over the next few years brought a number of critically-oriented scholars together in one place. Importantly, several of these people had strong interests in health psychology, and arrived at a time when the programme was expanding. This fostered the development of a strong critical health psychology at Massey, and by the early 2000s a full postgraduate programme was established, with three courses, a practicum, and research thesis. The three courses were critical in orientation, and unique in that all three utilised textbooks written by the lecturers involved (Lyons & Chamberlain, 2006; Stephens, 2008). For more detail of these developments, see Chamberlain et al. (2018). These texts are now dated so a new text on critical health psychology from a new generation of scholars at Massey University, and elsewhere in Aotearoa New Zealand, is a welcome development that continues the legacy of the Massey health psychology programme.

The book is a very timely contribution that covers the most recent developments in this flourishing field. It emphasises the value of understanding complex issues using theory and encourages critical reflection on the concepts used in health psychology to challenge taken-for-granted understandings of health and illness. Paying attention to issues of power and equity, Critical Health Psychology: Foundations, Approaches and Applications considers the structural and systemic factors influencing health and emphasises how health is shaped by broader social, cultural, political, environmental, and historical contexts. Importantly, the text adds to previous work by including diverse conceptual frameworks from both Western traditions and Indigenous perspectives to support professional practice grounded in ethics, cultural safety, and reflexivity in contexts like Aotearoa New Zealand (where Te Tiriti o Waitangi is central), or in any other social contexts. The key message here is the importance of local knowledge.

The editors have attracted established critical researchers in the field of health psychology from across Aotearoa New Zealand to work together and co-author the sections of the book. The chapters together provide a comprehensive resource for students and practitioners of health psychology. At the same time, each chapter provides a comprehensive and scholarly overview of a specific area and will become an important reference for those seeking guidance in areas such as hauora (health) from a Māori perspective, different theoretical frameworks, or applications in health practice.

There are many ways in which the text builds upon previous writing for students who are studying critical health psychology (including our own early textbooks). One of the major strengths of the book is the contextually-grounded, local examples of applications of critical health psychology that are relevant well beyond their local contexts. They speak directly to international concerns about inequities in health and provide excellent tools that readers/students can draw on in their activism for social justice. Part One introduces the reader to foundational thinking and Part Two builds on this foundation to develop understanding of approaches to health and illness. In Part Three, the text takes the theories, concepts, contexts, approaches, and frameworks described in the previous two parts of the book and applies them in multiple ways, showing the interconnected nature of different aspects of application (such as ethics, cultural safety, and reflexivity) across different contexts (such as classrooms, clinics, and communities) and across different sectors of society (such as marginalised groups, disability communities, and Indigenous populations).

An exciting strength of this text is its accessibility, as the whole book is open access and freely available to download, either as a complete online text, or as separate chapters. The text can also be easily updated as new knowledge becomes available. This new approach to publishing means that practitioners, scholars, and students in health psychology are able to participate in more immediate meaningful relationships as knowledge is shared and reflected upon.

We commend the editors and authors for this text, which makes an impressive contribution to critical health psychology, presenting innovative and up-to-date ideas, theories, and research, and making this freely available to all. This book will be widely used and be highly influential in shaping the future of critical health psychology internationally.

Christine Stephens, Antonia Lyons, and Kerry Chamberlain

References

Chamberlain, K., Lyons, A., & Stephens, C. (2018). Critical health psychology in New Zealand: Developments, directions and reflections. Journal of Health Psychology, 23(3), 457–471. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359105317734871

Lyons, A., & Chamberlain, K. (2006). Health psychology: A critical introduction. Cambridge University Press.

Stephens, C. (2008). Health promotion: A psychosocial approach. Open University Press.