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Reviews : Edward Maibach & Roxanne Louiselle Parrott (Eds.), Designing Health Messages: Approaches from Communication Theory and Public Health Practice Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995, 304 pp. US$42.00 (hbk); ISBN 0-8039-5397-6. US$21.95 (pbk); ISBN 0-8039-5398-4

are generally covered in the service of this agenda. For example, in one section Radley provides a conceptual analysis of stress, but goes beyond this to show the limitations of this construct for explaining health when viewed from a sociocultural perspective. In another example, an historical account of doctor–patient communication is used to highlight how the patient perspective was overlooked in this research at first and how more recent research included this perspective. However, Radley moves this issue beyond a traditional psychological approach to include other views which identify the moral obligations of the parties in this interaction, and how these, as well as their social and cultural understandings of health and disease, position the doctor and the patient and inform their interaction from a wider perspective. The moral account can be found as an important sub-theme, and Radley incorporates moral considerations throughout the text. These include: the moral obligations on the individual to be responsible for her or his health and to stay healthy; how symptoms legitimate the moral claim to be treated in certain ways by others; how the sick are conditionally legitimated provided they comply with treatment and role expectations; and the obligations on sick persons to make themselves acceptable to the ‘normal’ world of the healthy. These social issues of legitimization have been given little attention by health psychologists, but Radley demonstrates their importance for improving our understandings of all aspects of health and illness. The title of the text and the chapter headings provide an insight into the style of the book. The text is written very clearly, generally using everyday language, and the book would be comprehensible to any interested ‘lay’ reader. Where technical or specialist theoretical issues are introduced, Radley frequently provides a descriptive account accompanied by concrete examples. For student use, the text is pitched at an advanced undergraduate level, although it would also be very useful as an orienting text for graduates without any previous background in health psychology. This book is a ‘must read’ for all students of health psychology, and will be of considerable interest and value to others interested in the field. The discipline has not involved itself with the central issues of this book so far, but Radley has now brought this material together in an accessible way, offering important new perspectives, and directions for the discipline. This book goes a long way towards making sense for, and of, health psychology.