Subjective health and ill health-related behaviour

• Objective. The aim of this study was to investigate the relation between self-rated health measures and ill healthrelated behaviour. Design. The study design was based on a self-report questionnaire taken for three consecutive years. Method. Path analysis was used to test the relations between (a) The Self-rated Health Scale (SRH) and the General Symptom Index (GSI) from the Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90), and (b) self-reports on sick leave, health care utilization and medication, in a group of 155 persons who had terminated psychotherapeutic treatment the year before our three-year panel survey. To investigate the potential moderating function of ongoing psychotherapeutic treatment, we repeated each test in a group of 152 patients in the midst of psychotherapeutic treatment. Results. Only weak or zero relations were found between the self-rated health measures and ill health-related behaviour. The multi-group analyses indicated between-group differences in model fit. The few significant specific between-group differences all concerned autoregressive relations. Conclusions. Subjective health did not predict ill health-related behaviour. Ongoing psychotherapeutic treatment did not affect the predictive value of subjective health variables. The weak relations found in the current study illuminate paradoxical outcome differences between subjective well-being and ill health-related behaviour. Our findings are discussed in the light of cultural and personality factors. © 2007 The British Psychological Society.

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