Health Psychology is concerned with the study of psychological process in health, illness and health care. Health psychologists study behavioural factors associated with staying healthy, and they examine how patients with health problems can be helped to improve their quality of life. They may also examine individuals in an experimental setting, work with groups in real-life settings, or observe social interactions taking place betwen health-care professionals and patients in a variety of health-care contexts.

Health psychology is one of the fastest-growing subdisciplines in psychology, if not the fastest.

Health and ilness have long been the object of scientific and clinical interest for psychologists. The separation between “psychological” on the one hand, and “physical, medical or somatic” on the other, is quite superficial and unhelpful- modern developments in the area of psyco-neuro-immunology, for example, or the area of interrelationships between geneticc and behavioural factors in staying healthy or becoming ill, are just some illustrations of this statement.