Handbook of Latin American Health Psychology

This handbook presents a comprehensive overview of a tradition of psychological research and practice little known in the English-speaking world: the Latin American school of health psychology. Even though health psychology as a field of research and practice was born in Latin America with the creation of the National Group of Health Psychology within the Cuban Ministry of Public Health in 1969, this genesis is seldom acknowledged in the international literature. And even less is known on an international level about the original contributions that Latin American health psychologists have made and still make to the development of the discipline.

This volume aims to fill this gap by presenting to the international community a comprehensive account of the particular trajectory of health psychology in Latin America and the original contributions made by a field of research and practice that has always tried to integrate a socio-culturally sensitive approach to develop studies and interventions in health promotion and disease prevention. This is done by bringing together chapters written by leading experts from the region that explain the specific social, political and cultural contexts in which health psychology developed in Latin America; present the original theoretical and methodological approaches developed by Latin American health psychologists; and provide an overview of current research done in the region about the contribution of psychology to the management of various health conditions.

The Handbook of Latin American Health Psychology will be of interest to researchers, practitioners and students interested in the internationalization and cross-cultural generalizability of health psychology, as a tool for building a truly global and culturally sensitive discipline.

Some chapters of this handbook were originally written in Spanish and translated into English with the help of artificial intelligence. A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content.