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Adolescent lifestyle

from Psychology, health and illness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2014

By
Leif Edvard Aarø
Edited by
Susan Ayers ,
Andrew Baum ,
Chris McManus ,
Stanton Newman ,
Kenneth Wallston ,
John Weinman  and
Robert West
Leif Edvard Aarø
Affiliation:
University of Bergen
Susan Ayers
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
Andrew Baum
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
Chris McManus
Affiliation:
St Mary's Hospital Medical School
Stanton Newman
Affiliation:
University College and Middlesex School of Medicine
Kenneth Wallston
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University School of Nursing
John Weinman
Affiliation:
United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy's and St Thomas's
Robert West
Affiliation:
St George's Hospital Medical School, University of London
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Summary

Definitions

Leading organizations in the field of disease prevention and health promotion, such as the World Health Organization (Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland) and the Centers for Disease Control (Atlanta, USA), have since the early 1980s used healthy lifestyles as a label for a cluster of behaviours known to reduce the risk of injury, morbidity and mortality and increase the chances of good health and well-being. Health-related behaviours (health-enhancing or health-compromising) include eating habits, physical exercise, smoking, alcohol use, use of illegal addictive substances, sexual practices, risk-taking in traffic, work etc., use of safety devices (for instance wearing safety helmets when biking), sleeping habits, oral hygiene and personal hygiene. Examples of health-related behaviours which are relevant only to specific ethnic groups are exposure to the sun in order to obtain a more tanned skin among Caucasians, or use of skin-whitening creams among ethnic groups with dark skin colours.

The concept of lifestyle is also used in other contexts. In the field of marketing, analysis of consumer lifestyles means examining the way people live (their activities, interests, values and opinions) in order to better tailor marketing efforts to specific target groups.

According to Elliott (1993):

… a lifestyle has been defined as a distinctive mode of living that is defined by a set of expressive, patterned behaviors of individuals occurring with some consistency over a period of time.

It should be evident from this definition that the lifestyle construct is not meant to capture the totality of a person's behaviour.

Type
Chapter
Information
Cambridge Handbook of Psychology, Health and Medicine , pp. 3 - 9
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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