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J Behav Med (2016) 39:935946 DOI 10.1007/s10865-016-9782-2
http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10865-016-9782-2&domain=pdf
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Web End = The Common-Sense Model of Self-Regulation (CSM): a dynamic framework for understanding illness self-management
Howard Leventhal1 L. Alison Phillips2 Edith Burns3
Received: May 9, 2016 / Accepted: August 2, 2016 / Published online: August 11, 2016 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
Abstract The Common-Sense Model of Self-Regulation (the Common-Sense Model, CSM) is a widely used theoretical framework that explicates the processes by which patients become aware of a health threat, navigate affective responses to the threat, formulate perceptions of the threat and potential treatment actions, create action plans for addressing the threat, and integrate continuous feedback on action plan efcacy and threat-progression. A description of key aspects of the CSMs historyover 50 years of research and theoretical developmentmakes clear the models dynamic underpinnings, characteristics, and assumptions. The current article provides this historical narrative and uses that narrative to highlight dynamic aspects of the model that are often not evaluated or utilized in contemporary CSM-based research. We provide suggestions for research advances that can more fully utilize these dynamic aspects of the CSM and have the potential to further advance the CSMs contribution to medical practice and patients self-management of illness.
Keywords Common-Sense Model of Self-Regulation
Illness representations Treatment representations
Illness perceptions
The Common-Sense Model of Self-Regulation (CSM) provides a conceptual framework for examining the perceptual, behavioral and cognitive processes involved in individuals self-management of ongoing and future health threats. The CSM describes a dynamic, multi-level process that generates individuals representations of threats to health, procedures for management, and a system for creating action-plans and implementing action. The process is often initiated by somatic sensations and deviations from normal function (e.g., symptoms, falls), as well as by observation and discussions of illness in others (including medical diagnoses), and on occasion from mass media and other environmental cues. These stimuli activate prototypes, or memory structures of the individuals normal functioning self, past experiences of illnesses, and treatments and lifestyle activities; and they generate mental representations of illness threats (i.e., beliefs regarding illness identity, cause, control, consequences, and duration/timeline beliefs), possible treatments, and action plans.
This article reviews the development of the CSM over several decades, illustrating how its contemporary conceptual structure derived...