The health effects of psychosocial factors are a widely discussed and controversial topic. Do positive and negative emotions affect our risk of developing physical disease? Are depressive individuals more likely to have cancer than those with an optimistic outlook on life? And what is the role of IQ in staying healthy and recovering from disease? Importantly, can we improve our health and life expectancy by avoiding certain psychosocial risk factors and maximizing positive psychological well-being? These and other questions are the focus of psychosocial epidemiology, a discipline linking psychological, social and biological sciences.

The Routledge International Handbook of Psychosocial Epidemiology is the first book to map this growing discipline. Including contributions from many of the leading researchers in the field, it is divided into five sections:

• Part I: Methodological challenges in studying psychosocial factors and health;
• Part II: Psychosocial factors in the etiology and prognosis of chronic diseases;
• Part III: Controversies in the psychosocial approach;
• Part IV: Interventions and policy implications
• Part V: Future research directions

Taking advantage of a huge growth in research in recent years, the book provides the reader with the essentials to evaluate the diverse set of studies on psychosocial factors and health that are published today, and describes study designs in this field of research, progress in judging the validity of epidemiological evidence, as well as challenges in translating evidence into action.

This is an important and timely book. Providing methodological rigour, critical analysis and the policy implications of this emerging field of study, The Routledge International Handbook of Psychosocial Epidemiology will be an invaluable resource for students and researchers within both behavioural and medical sciences, as well as policy makers and others working in health and social care.
About the Author:

Mika Kivimaki is Professor and Chair of Social Epidemiology at the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London, UK, Director of the UK Whitehall II cohort study, Research Professor in Clinicum, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Finland, and Principal Investigator of the IPD-Work Cohort Consortium.

G David Batty is Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology & Public Health at University College London, UK, an Honorary Professor of Epidemiology in the MRC Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Glasgow.

Andrew Steptoe is Head of the Department of Behavioural Science and Health in the Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care in the Faculty of Population Health Sciences, University College London, UK, and Principal Investigator of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA).

Ichiro Kawachi is John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Social Epidemiology, and Chair of the Social & Behavioral Sciences Department at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, USA.