What individuals do (or do not do) when they get sick: A review of theoretical frameworks of illness behavior and their application in empirical research

Background: Decision making in the event of sickness has a major influence on people's lives. Moreover, patients' decisions about healthcare fundamentally determine the performance of the overall healthcare system in terms of a population's health, the quality of healthcare services, and the level of expenditures. Understanding what individuals do or do not do when they experience physical or mental symptoms of illness has therefore been a key topic in medical sociology and health psychology alike. In both disciplines, several prominent models of illness behavior have been developed and used in empirical analysi…