Love, Fear, and Health: How Our Attachments to Others Shape Health and Health Care

Can the way in which we relate to others seriously affect our health? Can understanding those attachments help health care providers treat us better? In Love, Fear, and Health, psychiatrists Robert Maunder and Jonathan Hunter draw on evidence from neuroscience, stress physiology, social psychology, and evolutionary biology to explain how understanding attachment – the ways in which people seek security in their close relationships – can transform patient outcomes.

Using attachment theory, Maunder and Hunter provide a practical, clinically focused introduction to the influence of attachment styles on an individual’s risk of disease and the effectiveness of their interactions with health care providers. Drawing on more than fifty years of combined experience as health care providers, teachers, and researchers, they explain in clear language how health care workers in all disciplines can use this knowledge to meet their patients’ needs better and to improve their health.