Book excerpt: Health Psychology is essential reading for all students and researchers of health psychology. Organized into four sections, the 6th edition is structured with a clear emphasis on theory and evidence throughout. This textbook maintains its popular and balanced approach between the biomedical and psychosocial model, while strengthening its focus on critical thinking and behaviour change. Key updates include: • Learning objectives: Each chapter opens with a set of learning objectives, which clearly outlines the knowledge, understanding and skills you will acquire from each chapter. • Case studies: Each chapter includes a case study to illustrate how the key theories and ideas are relevant to everyday life. • Through the Eyes of Health Psychology: A brand new feature to show how a health psychologist might analyse each case study using the theories and concepts presented throughout the book. • Health promotion: A whole chapter devoted to the theories and evidence relevant to behaviour change and includes a new section on integrated approaches and the drive to develop a new science of behaviour change. • Thinking critically about: The process of thinking critically is introduced in the first chapter which describes how to think critically about theory, methods, measurement and research design. Each chapter has its own ‘Thinking critically about ...’ section at the end to highlight problems with specific theories and research areas. This section includes critical thinking questions and a ‘Some problems with...’ section to form the basis of class discussions and enable students to be more critical in their thinking and writing.