Health Tips (Avoidance of Health Screening and Treatments)
INTRODUCTION
Avoiding health screening and treatments can be described, with respect to my own understanding, as the act of showing negligence to medical check-ups, tests, and screening for chronic diseases. It can also be said to be an act of showing a lackadaisical attitude towards health or medical activities relating to diagnosing, testing, check-ups, or other self-screening for illness and health status. This attitude is accompanied by many factors like attitude and belief (cognition), and environmental influence (social). An individual may be avoiding screening or treatments because he or she believes he or she is not susceptible to the illness or the cost of health screening and treatments is high. He or she may be avoiding screening or treatments because none of his friends do it or his or her peers always see people going for screening or treatments as weaklings. (Ogden J., 2019).
ANALYSIS OF THE BEHAVIOR.
As said earlier, the behavior mentioned above is accompanied by both psycho and social (cognition and environmental influence) factors. A person may not go for screening due to the cost of the screening or the belief that he or she can’t be infected with the illness (Ogden J., 2019). For example, in Nigeria, where I reside now, as the whole world is in battle with the COVID-19 PANDEMIC, many Nigerians believe that the existence of the virus in Nigeria is not true and that the government is just trying to get some benefits from the World Health Organization(WHO) and the United States. That’s why they are campaigning and uploading figures of infected individuals every day. Due to a belief they hold, they avoid getting the COVID-19 vaccine and going for PCR tests. Some say that the vaccines are meant to harm the citizens and other critical beliefs, but some fail to go for screening not because of that negative belief but due to the cost of the PCR test. Also, there are cases where an individual that is willing to go for the test is discouraged by his or her peers that anybody that goes for the test will be said to be COVID-19 positive. Using the HBM (Health Belief Model), I will analyze the effects and consequences of the behavior (avoidance of health screening or treatments). The Health Belief Model, as it was developed by Rosenstock (1966) and later developed further by Becker and colleagues throughout the 1970s and 1980s, can be used to analyze behavior using steps on the ladder of the model. Starting from the demographic variables that are linked to 1) susceptibility 2) Severity 3) Costs 4) Benefits 5) Cue to action 6) Health motivation 7) Perceived control, which is the basis of HBM. to the likelihood of behavior. (Ogden J., 2019).
Susceptibility: An individual may avoid screening for COVID-19 due to the belief that he is not working in the health section, he did not travel out of his state, and he had no contact with anybody that arrived from abroad recently, whereas an individual that did the aforementioned acts would believe there are chances he is infected with COVID-19 and he would like to go for screening and also obtain the vaccine.
Severity:- An individual who believes that the virus infection is severe will likely want to avoid the pain perceived while an individual that believes that the news about the severity of the virus is exaggerated and are not facts will likely not turn up to screening or obtaining the vaccine.
Costs: An individual who believes that the cost of having a PCR test is too high and that if he is vaccinated, he might feel weak and not be able to perform some activities would likely avoid screening and vaccination, while someone who believes his health and wellness come before anything would likely go for the screening and vaccine.
Benefits: Those that believe that the prevention of COVID-19 by screening and vaccination is beneficial to their lives will likely go for it, whereas, those that don’t value the prevention of the virus will not.
Cue to action: An individual that believes he is okay and has no symptoms of the virus infection will likely indulge in the behavior and get infected or find him or herself at a critical stage, while someone that perceives the symptoms will not want to avoid the screening and treatments and may thereby perform early diagnostic and survive.
Health Motivation: An individual that believes that not going for screening may endanger his or her life as he or she may already be at a very severe stage before diagnosis will likely not want to avoid screening for the viral infection, while someone that is less concerned will likely avoid it and get infected or find him or herself at a critical stage.
Perceived control: An individual that believes he is capable of stopping the virus from spreading and preventing him or herself from it will likely not avoid screening or treatments, while one that believes there is no way to stop the virus will likely avoid the screening or treatments. (Ogden J., 2019).
The model above has been used to explain the effects and the consequences of behavior, but it is based only on cognition and not environmental influence. The environmental influence can be analyzed using the Biopsychosocial Model as developed by Engel (1977) (Ogden J. 2019). Using the social, which includes the family, peers, financial issues, etc. The act of avoiding screening or treatment may be due to environmental influences like low awareness about the illness in the society or community, one’s peers seeing screening as a waste of time, and getting the individual to believe that he or she should only go to the hospital when he or she is sick. (Ogden J., 2019).
CONCLUSION
Avoiding medical screening or treatments has been explained and analyzed above using HBM (Health Belief Model) and Engel’s Biopsychosocial Model, which explains the effects of self-belief (cognition) and environmental influence (social) on behavior. We could deduce that the behavior is a negative behavior that has to be changed if an individual wants to live a healthy life. So every individual has to be educated on the threats this behavior (avoiding medical screening) can pose to him or her and the benefits of screening. While the government of a particular state should assist with enlightenment programs relating to health and ways of preventing illness, the activity can reduce the progress of the behavior.
