Illness behaviour and sexually transmitted diseases.

No matter what talent or scientific skill, no matter what resources are devoted to the development of services for the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), they may only operate effectively if those who can benefit present themselves for treatment. Endeavours to improve the quality of service in relation to sexually transmitted diseases, therefore, require that some attention be given to the question of illness behaviour. For a long while it has been known that in general only a small proportion of people with treatable complaints actually bother to present themselves for treatment by a qualified medical practitioner. Even though this has been known, attempts to explain why some do and some do not go to the doctor have met with little success. Attempts to find explanations, particularly in the more obvious and commonsensical directions such as the seriousness, the painfulness, or the inconvenience of the complaint, have failed; neither do the usual demographic variables such as age, sex, social class, nor ethnic background account for the major variations in illness behaviour. It is true that these variables do discriminate to some extent, but within any particular cultural or socioeconomic group variation exists, which, as yet, students of illness behaviour have largely been unable to explain. There have, however, been some signs of hope in studies which have broken away from focusing on individual characteristics-be they psychological or socioeconomic-to focus on symptoms as perceived by potential patients in their everyday lives. That is, temporarily, the notions of sickness and health which belong primarily to professional medicine have been placed aside and attention has