"MY PHILOSOPHY Psychological health faced a number of significant setbacks over the last few years. Furthermore, the political and racial divides in the United States have grown. A lot happened since the last edition of this book. There was a global pandemic and in America, citizens rose up for change in the face of the murder of George Floyd and a spate of mass shootings. Much more has to be done. There continue to be significant differences in health behaviors and the incidence of illnesses such as coronary heart disease and cancer across ethnic groups. It is crucial for researchers to acknowledge these cultural differences. In this fifth edition, I have further fine-tuned the cultural focus and explained more thoroughly how culture is an important predictor of health. I also took a dramatic step. Recognizing that we all have our biases, I wanted to really try and provide different perspectives. Not only did I push myself to look for more research on diverse groups, I wanted to give you more perspectives that just mine. I invited diverse contributors to edit and revise chapters with me. Five women of diverse nationalities, ethnicities, and theoretical backgrounds worked on a subset of the chapters in this book. Learn more about them at the end of this preface. I am grateful for their work and this edition is stronger for it. THIS EDITION The goals of this fifth edition are to examine how you can study the areas of health, illness, and medicine from a psychological and cultural perspective and to introduce the main topics and issues in the area of health psychology. This is in combination with providing training to judge the scientific quality of research on psychology and medicine. I begin by describing what health psychology is all about, emphasizing the importance of cultural competence. I then highlight research methods in health psychology and provide a primer to navigating research in scholarly publications. I build on these basics with a revealing chapter on cultural variations in health beliefs and behaviors (how do shamans, acupuncture, yoga, and sweat lodges fit into health?). Our physiology is an important determinant of health. Chapter 4 describes essential physiological systems and processes that will aid your understanding of the different topics discussed later in the book. I then unravel the mysteries of stress and the ways to cope. In Chapters 5 and 6, I discuss the theories explaining stress and the many practical ways to alleviate it. Armed with tools to make everyday life stress free, I turn to another common aspect of life: health behaviors that many of us do (or try to do more often) and those we try not to do. Chapter 7 describes some of the ways we can change health behaviors, and Chapter 8 describes some of the behaviors in detail. The second half of the book turns to topics relating to sickness, such as factors that surround illness (such as adherence and patient-practitioner interactions; Chapter 9), pain (Chapter 10), and disabilities, terminal illness, and death (Chapter 11), before examining some of the major health concerns and illnesses plaguing society today (such as HIV, cancer, and cardiovascular disease; Chapters 12 to 14). Finally, I identify the major challenges faced by those in the field of health psychology (and provide some avenues for future exploration and training in this area). If you think I have missed something, if you have a suggestion for how this book can be improved, if you want to share a way that your culture has influenced your health, or even if you want to share that you really enjoyed learning about health psychology using this book (that's my goal), you may contact me by email at gurungr@uwgb.edu"--
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