Different Perspectives on Social Support and Health Determinants

Abstract

Aims: Social support plays a crucial role in health-promotion and well-being. This symposium aims to examine how health determinants are affected by social support. Rationale: To obtain a complete picture of social support and its associations to health determinants and well-being, findings from different perspectives, i.e. mobilization, provision and receipt of support will be presented. Summary: First, Laireiter et al. identify mobilizers’ and providers’ characteristics to predict the willingness to provide support. Keller et al. apply social support to the planning of health-behavior, investigating how individual and dyadic planning strategies are used in adopting pelvic-floor exercise, followed by Burkert et al. who examine the dependence of individual planning or received social support on further interpersonal determinants in the context of smoking cessation. The influence of received social support for the promotion of self-efficacy and physical activity in patients with obesity is presented by Hohl et al. Finally, referring to the providers’ perspective, again, König et al. show how invisible support may affect providers’ well-being. 1. Laireiter et al., 2. Keller et al., 3. Burkert et al., 4. Hohl et al., 5. König et al.