The right perspective on responsibility for ill health.
There is a growing trend in policy making of holding people responsible for their lifestyle-based diseases. This has sparked a heated debate on whether people are responsible for these illnesses, which has now come to an impasse. In this paper, I present a psychological model that explains why different views on people's responsibility for their health exist and how we can reach a resolution of the disagreement. My conclusion is that policymakers should not perceive people as responsible while health care personnel should take the opposing view.
Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science, The Faculty of Arts, Olof Wijksgatan 6, Box 200, 405 30 Göteborg, Sweden. karl.persson@filosofi.gu.se
Karl
K
Persson
D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001294:Attitude to Health; D004194:Disease / Q000209:etiology*; D006291:Health Policy; D006801:Humans; D008019:Life Style; D008960:Models, Psychological; D009014:Morals