Representations of health, illness and medicines: coping strategies and health-promoting behaviour.

This study focuses on the different representations of health, illness and medicines that are held by the population of the Basque Country. In addition, relationships between these representations and both coping strategies towards first symptoms of disease and health-promoting actions were studied. Three different representations were found: (a) an active/'against medicines' representation; (b) a 'magical/pro-medicines' representation; and (c) a representation that combines aspects of the previous representations. These representations were anchored in different social groups (defined by age, educational background, etc.) and were related to different coping strategies in the event of first symptoms of illness, and to differences in health-promoting behaviour.