Assessment of Psychological Functioning and Risk in Healthcare Settings

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Background

Since the 1970s, advances in psychological and medical research have incorporated the biopsychosocial model which emphasizes how people’s perception of health and illness, and attendant health care approaches, involve a complex interplay of different biological, behavioral, and psychological factors. Moreover, this paradigm has become increasingly universal, and has been endorsed and adopted by, for example, the World Health Organization which acknowledges that biological aspects (e.g., genetic predisposition), behavioral components, (e.g., lifestyle, health beliefs), and psychological functioning (e.g., anxiety, depression, resilience, family relationships, and social support) all play a role in people’s understanding of health and illness and, thus, that healthcare workers’ approach to health and illness must incorporate all three factors in every clinical encounter.

Alongside this background, this Research Topic focuses on how the biopsychosocial model of health and illness is becoming increasingly important when approaching and treating children’s chronic diseases in healthcare settings. This becomes apparent because highlighting the biopsychosocial view in healthcare settings reduces children’s risk of developing major medical problems, demonstrates more positive effects during medical treatments from the patient, caregiver, and healthcare worker perspectives, and facilitates a dynamic interplay between psychological functioning and a child and their parents’ capacity to cope with illness.

Our focus is also on how professional figures in child healthcare contexts are clearly implicated in the biopsychosocial model of functioning: medical doctors, psychologists, counselors, researchers, occupational therapists, and health educators are all involved in understanding, from different perspectives, how biological, behavioral, and psychological factors influence health and illness over the life span, specifically through the use of several psychological, psycho-diagnostic, and psychotherapeutic techniques and competencies which help and affect the abilities of individuals to function in healthcare settings.

This Research Topic welcomes papers providing empirical evidence for emphasizing the importance of assessing the psychological functioning of risk in healthcare settings, especially for children, adolescents, and their caregivers. With this article collection we would like to provide an academic focal point for the interdisciplinary study of child health and wellbeing, public health and welfare, rehabilitation and intervention, and related aspects of family changes and reactions over the life span. We would like to include both clinical work focused on children and their families, and public service professionals' activities and wellbeing that consider child healthcare settings that are particularly challenging to manage from a psychological point of view.

Paper contributions should include methodological issues such as the validation of specifically useful measures for healthcare contexts, and psychological profiles such as the potentially increased levels of stress and risk for persons with specific medical diagnoses. The contribution of multiple informant points of view are also welcome such as those from parents, caregivers, doctors, psychologists, occupational therapists and health educators. Case studies are also welcome provided that they demonstrate the value of a mixed method approach for the biopsychosocial model and also the importance of a holistic perspective within specific healthcare settings. Papers which focus on the underlying processes and outcomes of psychological treatments that involved children and/or their families or professionals in public health care settings are also welcome.

Keywords: assessment, risk and protective factors, healthcare settings, parents, developmental age, healthcare professionals

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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