History of health psychology

Abstract

This chapter gives an overview of the history of health psychology, covering the development of the discipline across a number of countries, including the United States of America (USA), Europe, the United Kingdom (UK), Japan, Africa, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It takes a look at the key influences on its development, changes to job opportunities, discussions on the need for training models to accommodate standardised skill sets, core journals and books that were published to assist knowledge transfer of this new discipline, and how the growth in countries where health psychology is well-established such as the UK, differ from less developed countries. It includes extracts from interviews with 53 Health Psychologists (mainly trained in the UK) as part of the Royal Society–funded Oral History of Health Psychology (OHHP) in the UK Project (funded 2016–2018), many of whom were involved in European and international developments. New oral testimony from this project, interviewed by the authors, is presented in this chapter for the first time, highlighted by the date on which people were interviewed as part of this historical work. The chapter concludes with practical tips to ensure that history continues to be able to be captured in the future on an international platform through good documentation at annual meetings and as part of professional network events, conferences, and peer-reviewed journals.