PSYC 3121 - Chapter 1: What is health psychology?

There are two main ways to define the field of health psychology:

1.) The study of how psychological influences contribute to health, illness, and reaction to illness; and

2.) Scientific, educational, and professional contributions of psychological theory, practice, and research to health-related issues

According to the World Health Organization (1948), health refers to

"A complete state of physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease"

An individual's health is a combination of

Physical, and social well-being

The optimal state of being, where all types of health are being taken care of, is often referred to as

Wellness

There are four main areas that health psychologists focus on:

1.) Health promotion and maintenance

2.) Prevention and treatment of illness and disease

3.) The etiology and correlates of health, illness and dysfunction

4.) Analysis and improvement of the health care system and health policy

Health Promotion and Maintenance involves

Promoting regular exercise and good health habits in children

Prevention and treatment of illness and disease involves

Stress management for individuals in fast paced occupations, promoting regular cancer screening and helping those with illnesses learn how to adhere to their treatment regimen.

The etiology and correlates of health, illness and dysfunction involves

Interest in behavioural and social factors that contribute to health/illness ex: smoking, exercise, diet, coping mechanisms

Etiology

Origins or causes of illness

Modifiable behaviours

Behaviours that can be changed to improve health.

Modifiable behaviours can be categorized as

Screening behaviours, care-seeking behaviours or maintenance and adherence behaviours

Mind-Body Relationship

The philosophical position regarding whether the mind and body operate indistinguishably as a single system or whether they act as two separate systems; the view guiding health psychology is that the mind and body are indistinguishable.

The view guiding health psychology is that the mind and body are

Indistinguishable

In early records, people seemed to think that the mind and body were a single unit, so believed that disease came from

Evil spirits entering the body

Trephination

Small holes would be made in the skull to supposedly release the spirits

Hippocrates and Galen's four humours

blood ("Sanguine"),

black bile ("Melancholic"),

yellow bile ("Choleric"), and

phlegm ("Phlegmatic").

They also believed that certain personality types were tied to particular humoral imbalances, meaning

That they saw a relationship between the body and mind

Cellular pathology

How problems with our cells can lead to disease

This dualistic approach involved a reliance on

Physical evidence - which was essentially the only basis for diagnosis and treatment

Biomedical Model

A perspective that explains illness solely in terms of biological factors

Once modern psychology began, and Sigmund Freud came along, things changed again. He came up with the idea of

Conversion hysteria

Conversion hysteria

Suggests that to compensate for the unconscious conflicts in our minds, our bodies create physical symptoms and as a result we feel less anxious about the conflicts and feel the physical symptoms instead

Conversion hysteria started the pendulum swing back to the idea that

The mind and body are not completely separate

Freud gave us the first conceptualization of

The mind

In more recent years, though the concept of conversion hysteria fell out of favour, the idea that physical illnesses could be caused by _________ _______ was still supported

Internal conflicts

Leading researchers in this area, including Dunbar and Alexander, linked general personality patterns to

Illnesses, rather than a single internal conflict

Psychosomatic Medicine

A field developed in the 1900s to study and treat particular diseases believed to be caused by emotional conflicts.

According to the psychosomatic medicine perspective, certain physical illnesses and disorders are caused by

Emotional conflicts (ex: ulcers, asthma)

Although the psychosomatic model helped to illustrate that that the mind and body are connected, many of the conclusions that came from it and interventions that were proposed were

Subjective and not testable

Behavioural medicine

An interdisciplinary field concerned with integrating behavioural science and biomedical science for understanding physical health and illness and for developing and applying knowledge and techniques to prevent, diagnose, treat and rehabilitate.

Although a lot of the previous theories and ideas about the relationship between mind and body are not necessarily valid today

Many of them did help to illustrate throughout history that our physical health is absolutely influences by psychological and social factors, along with biological factors

Holistic health

The view that the mind, body, and spirit are interdependent and function as a whole within the environment

Biomedical model

The viewpoint that illness can be explained on the basis of aberrant somatic processes and that psychological and social processes are largely independent of the disease process

The biomedical model is reductionistic meaning it

Relies on low level processes to explain illness without also considering broader psychological and social processes

The biomedical model is a single factor model meaning it

Assumes that a single biological malfunction causes illness, when in reality it is known that many interacting factors may contribute to the development of illness

The biomedical model assumes

Mind-body dualism (separate entities)

The biomedical model emphasizes illness over

Health - only spends time on things that can cause illness or lead to worse health, rather than also paying attention to factors that could promote better health.

Biopsychosocial Model

The view that the biological, psychological and social factors are all involved in any given state of health or illness

The biopsychosocial model assumes that

Micro-level (e.g., chemical imbalance) and macro-level (e.g., presence of social support) processes interact to produce our level of health/illness

The biopsychosocial model assumes that ___ and ___ are inseparable (both influence health)

Mind, body

The biopsychosocial model emphasizes both

Health and illness - health is something that must be achieved rather than something we automatically have

Systems theory

The view that all levels of an organization in any entity are linked to each other hierarchically and that change in any level will bring about change in other levels

The systems theory suggests that in the context of health, microlevel and macrolevel processes exist within the same organization and changes in one level can

Have effects on another (e.g., microlevel changes can have macrolevel effects, and vice versa).

There are several clinical implications that come with the adoption of the biopsychosocial model:

The process of diagnosis must consider biological, psychological, and social factors (as well as their interactions with each other) when assessing health and illness

Recommendations for treatment must also consider biological, psychological, and social factors

In the past, _____ disorders were the main causes of illness and death

Acute

Acute disorders

Short term illnesses that are often caused by bacteria or viruses and are usually pretty receptive to treatment (ex: tuberculosis and pneumonia)

Now, especially in industrialized countries, it is _______ diseases that are the primary causes of illness and death

Chronic (things like cancer and heart disease that develop slowly, that people have to live with for a long time, and that cannot always be cured, so instead they often have to be managed.)

Many chronic illnesses have clear psychological and social determinants — for example, health habits like smoking can play a major role in the development of

Cancer and lung diseases (chronic illness)

Chronic diseases stay with us for a long time so they can also lead to

Psychological issues

Interaction of psychological, social and physical factors effecting each other in chronic illness highlights the importance of

Health psychology

Genetic testing can reveal whether someone carries a gene linked to a disease, such as early-onset Alzheimer's. This can raise difficult questions, such as

Whether you should get tested, whether you want to know your risk, and how learning the result could affect you and your family.

Health psychologists do extensive research on risk factors for disease so they can

Help people make informed choices of positive change to minimize their risk

Epidemiology

A field that is very similar and closely related to health psychology which is the study of the frequency, distribution, and cause of both infectious and non-infectious disease based on the physical and social environment

Morbidity

The number of cases of a disease that exist at a particular time

Incidence

The number of new cases

Prevalence

The number of total cases

Mortality

How many people have died as a result of a particular illness or disease

Health psychologists play a critical role in taking this morbidity and mortality data and using it to create

Interventions to both prevent unnecessary death (mortality) and improve quality of life for those suffering from chronic diseases (morbidity).

By focusing on prevention, health psychologists can help to reduce the number of individuals who develop illnesses, thus decreasing the burden on the

Health care system

Health psychology students who go into medical fields (e.g., physicians, nurses) have the added benefit of understanding

The social and psychological aspects of the illnesses their patients are suffering from.

Allied health professionals can be:

Physiotherapists,

Occupational therapists,

Dieticians,

Social workers, or

Clinical psychologists.

Public health research involves conducting research and designing interventions focused on

Improving the health of the general population. Those who pursue this career can work in academic settings, medical settings, or government agencies.

Academic research involves

Going to graduate school, then working at an academic institution or health care center, conducting research, and training new students