Sydney, Jan 30 (IANS) What you think about your illness matters just as much, if not more, than the factors and conditions that determine your health condition.

Keith Petrie of the University of Auckland and John Weinman of the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College, London, conducted a review of the existing literature on patients’ perceptions of illness.

“A doctor can make accurate diagnoses and have excellent treatment but if the therapy doesn’t fit with the patient’s view of their illness, they are unlikely to keep taking it,” said Petrie, he journal Current Directions in Psychological Science reports.

A treatment that does not consider the patient’s view is likely to fail, he argued. In fact, some research suggests that how a person views his illness may play a bigger role in determining his health condition than the actual severity of his disease, according to an Auckland statement.

The bottom line, says Petrie, is that “patients’ perceptions of their illness guide their decisions about health”. If, for example, we feel like a prescribed treatment isn’t making us feel better we might stop that treatment.

Asking patients about how they view their illness gives physicians the opportunity to identify and correct any inaccurate beliefs patients may have.