How Kids Understand Health and Illness: Some Reflections from and for the Theory of Social Representations

Abstract

The purpose of the article is twofold: 1) to argue about utility and advantages of the social representational perspective applied to the field of health and illness in case of children, 2) to discuss the potential and fertility of cultural-historical psychology for the development of the theory of social representations (SRs). The studies concerning the children’s understanding of health and illness are analysed. The limitations of the perspective to study mental representations of health and illness are revealed. The relevance and thepotential of the theory of SRs on the problem of children’s understanding of health and illness are discussed. The article reviews the four main theoretical approaches to SRs analysis. It is highlighted that genesis of the SRs is a zone of proximal development (or better to say zona blizhaishego razvitia) of the theory of SRs. The final part of the article dwells on the main points of the cultural-historical psychology in order to reveal some insights for the development of the theory of SRs.

Keywords

• health
• illness
• corporeality
• children and adolescents
• theory of SRs
• theoretical approaches to SRs analysis
• cultural-historical psychology
• interiorisation