Categories of health problems according to Cornwell's book Hard earned lives: accounts of health and illness from East London (1984)32
| Features | |
|---|---|
| Normal illnesses | Acute conditions that medicine recognises and treats successfully. Childhood ailments and commonplace, relatively minor infections are typical examples. |
| Real illnesses | Chronic disabling conditions or more severe or life threatening conditions that medicine has a partial ability to treat. Conditions such as diabetes or epilepsy that have a clear medical diagnosis, a significant effect on the patient, and that require ongoing treatment are typical of “real illnesses.” Seeking medical advice is thus an appropriate response to having a real illness. |
| Health problems that are not illnesses | Problems associated with normal processes (for example, age related arthritis or hearing loss) or stem from the person's lifestyle (e.g. a backache in a man with a heavy job). “Health problems that are not illnesses” are to be “coped with”; seeking medical advice is not necessarily appropriate. |