1 Mental Representation, Health, and Illness: An Introduction -- Illness Schemata and the Representational Approach -- Current Trends in Illness Cognition Research -- The Present Volume -- Future Directions for Research and Theory in Illness Cognition -- 2 Lay Illness Models in the Enlightenment and the 20th Century: Some Historical Lessons -- Contemporary Lay Illness Models -- Lay Illness Models in the Enlightenment -- A Historical Note on Hippocratic-Galenic Medicine -- Clinical Lessons From Historical Research -- 3 Understanding the Understanding of Illness: Lay Disease Representations -- The Nature of Disease Representations -- Implications of Disease Representations -- Future Directions -- Conclusion -- 4 Situational, Dispositional, and Genetic Bases of Symptom Reporting -- The Prevailing View of Health Complaints: Naive Realism -- Situational Factors That Influence Health Complaints -- Dispositional Bases of Symptom Reporting: The Central Role of Negative Affectivity -- Heritable Bases of Symptom Reporting -- Integrating the Situational, Dispositional, and Heritability Approaches -- The Symptom Perception Model -- Implications of the Findings -- 5 Psychological Reactions to Risk Factor Testing -- Previous Research on Risk Factor Testing -- The TAA Enzyme Paradigm -- Extensions to Actual Risk Factors -- Conclusion -- 6 Laypersons' Judgments of Patient Credibility and the Study of Illness Representations -- Patient Credibility in Contemporary Biomedicine -- Patient Credibility and the Lay Perceiver -- Research Evidence on Lay Perceptions of Patient Credibility -- Conclusion -- 7 Illness Representations in Medical Anthropology: A Critical Review and a Case Study of the Representation of AIDS in Haiti -- Historical Background -- Four Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Illness Representations -- Case Study: AIDS Comes to a Haitian Village -- The Cultural Context of Illness Representations: Six Questions for the Researcher -- Conclusions -- 8 A Mental Representation Approach to Health Policy Analysis -- A Mental Representation Approach to Problem-Structuring -- A Mental Representation Approach to Policy Analysis in the Area of Alcohol Abuse -- A Mental Representation Approach to Policy Analysis in the Area of Multiple Sclerosis -- Implications of a Mental Representation Approach for Community Intervention -- Conclusion -- Appendix. Patient Coping/ Physician Orientation Instrument: Subscales and Sample Items -- 9 Assessing Illness Schemata in Patient Populations -- Why a Schema Approach? -- The Construct of Schema -- Research Findings -- Implications -- Appendix. Schema Assessment Instrument -- 10 Symptom Perception, Symptom Beliefs, and Blood Glucose Discrimination in the Self-Treatment of Insulin-Dependent Diabetes -- Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus: Consequences and Treatment -- Problems in Self-Treatment of IDDM -- A Self-Regulation Model of Diabetes Management -- Blood Glucose Symptomatology -- Accuracy of Symptom Perception and Beliefs -- Accuracy of Subjective BG Discrimination -- Clinical Intervention to Improve BG Estimation -- Conclusion -- 11 The Active Side of Illness Cognition -- Why Study Illness Cognition? -- The Construction of Common Sense Models -- Conclusion.