Applied Psychology and Health Lifespans: Comprehensive Course Notes
Assessment and Course Administration
The first lot of tutorials occurs during Week 3, and these sessions include the first quiz.
The quiz consists of questions covering content exclusively from the first two lectures.
Readings for Weeks 1 through 3 are grouped on Moodle as four specific readings without individual week designations. These four readings are considered mandatory for the tutorials and the quiz.
Content discussed in the Week 3 lecture will not be directly assessed in the current quiz, as the quiz materials were printed prior to the session, but the associated readings have been available for review.
The Lifespan Perspective on Health
Health is a lifelong development process; development begins at conception and continues through the end of life.
There is no single age period that governs development; change is constant across the entire life course.
Development is multidimensional, involving biological, cognitive, and social-emotional dimensions that develop in tandem.
Development is multidirectional. While certain capacities expand as individuals grow older, others may decline. This progression is not necessarily linear.
Plasticity refers to the capacity for change that persists across the life course. This principle is the fundamental basis for intervention; health behaviors are not fixed at any age and can be established, distributed, or reestablished.
Development is contextual, being deeply embedded in specific historical, cultural, and social circumstances.
Lifespan perspective requires tailoring age-appropriate practice. Interventions and programs must be matched to a specific life stage rather than just a diagnosis. For example, the same diagnosis requires different care approaches for an -year-old, a -year-old, and an -year-old.
Life stage determines what is feasible for a patient, not just what is theoretically optimal.
Developmental Stages and Health Behaviors
Early Development and Attachment
The foundations for health behavior are laid before a child has the cognitive capacity to choose them.
Secure attachment is the ideal outcome of early relationships. It occurs when a caregiver consistently and positively meets a vulnerable child's needs.
Secure attachment is associated with positive outcomes throughout the lifespan, including improved emotion regulation and coping abilities.
Early life stresses can negatively affect brain development and future stress reactivity.
Family habits, such as nutrition, sleep, and physical activity, are learned through exposure rather than choice during early life. Examples include family dinners, which foster connection, and culturally ingrained activities like swimming in Australia.
Affective Tags and Cumulative Experience
Experience in health behaviors is cumulative. Positive and negative experiences are carried forward throughout life.
According to effective reflective theory, positive emotion experienced during exercise is the strongest predictor of future exercise adherence.
"Affective tags" are emotional associations (ranging from positive to negative) attached to experiences. A positive tag (e.g., enjoying swimming as a child) makes the behavior more likely in the future, while an aversive experience (e.g., negative experiences with school swimming) leads to avoidance behavior.
Adolescence and Early Adulthood
Adolescence involves profound biological changes (e.g., puberty) coinciding with psychological transitions toward identity and independence.
Mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression, and social anxiety, often first emerge during adolescence.
Adolescence is a window of increased risk-taking behavior as independence increases.
In early adulthood, choices begin to set a trajectory that is harder (though not impossible) to reverse. This includes habits regarding smoking, alcohol consumption, diet, and physical activity.
Early adulthood is characterized by a low perceived risk. Because illness feels distant, preventative behaviors often feel optional.
Middle and Older Adulthood
In middle adulthood, long-term health effects of earlier lifestyle choices emerge, such as hypertension (high blood pressure), type 2 diabetes (issues regulating glucose and insulin), and cardiovascular disease.
These conditions are risk factors for early death; life expectancy is statistically lower for those with these conditions compared to those without.
Middle adulthood requires a sharp focus on stress management due to the convergence of career, financial, and caring responsibilities.
In older adulthood, a decline in physical and cognitive capacity is natural, but the pace of this decline is not fixed by biology alone. Biology accounts for some cellular aging, but behavior remains critical.
Approximately of deaths in older age are linked to avoidable causes, such as smoking and poor diet.
The goal in older adulthood is the "compression of morbidity," which means living fewer years with disability rather than simply increasing the number of years lived.
Health span is defined as the number of years a person lives with vitality and the capability to perform desired activities, whereas lifespan is simply the total number of years alive.
The UN Decade of Healthy Aging
The United Nations has declared the current decade as the Decade of Healthy Aging to foster global collaboration in four key areas:
Changing Perspectives: Shifting how society thinks about, feels about, and acts toward age and aging (e.g., viewing age as a marker of wisdom rather than just decline).
Age-Friendly Communities: Fostering the abilities of older people through community design.
Long-Term Care: Providing access to care for the increasing global population of older adults.
Integrated Care: Ensuring primary health services are responsive to the specific needs of older people.
Health Inequalities and Social Determinants
Health is not distributed randomly; it follows a social gradient where health outcomes are predictable based on social position.
Social determinants include education (least educated individuals typically have poorer health), housing, and work environments.
Access to healthcare is a primary driver of inequality; those on low incomes are less likely to see doctors, specialists, or dentists due to cost and logistical barriers (e.g., lack of transportation or time).
The COVID- pandemic disproportionately affected vulnerable populations, highlighting how economic position impacts the ability to survive lockdowns (e.g., casual workers losing shifts or students lacking Wi-Fi for online learning).
Social Causation vs. Social Drift
Social Causation: Economic hardship leads to illness (e.g., inability to afford preventative dental care leads to severe dental issues).
Social Drift: Illness leads to a lower socioeconomic position (e.g., a chronic condition prevents career advancement, causing the individual to drift down the social gradient).
These two pathways reinforce each other over the life course, widening the gap between groups as they age.
Psychosocial Factors in Health
Psychosocial factors are characteristics that influence individuals psychologically and socially, interacting directly with biological systems.
The "milkshake study" by Doctor Ali Ekrum demonstrated that the framing/labeling of a milkshake influenced the hunger hormone ghrelin. This illustrates that subjective psychological factors have real-time biological impacts.
Core psychosocial factors include:
Social Support: Emotional and practical aid associated with better health and psychological safety.
Socioeconomic Status: A major predictor of access and behavior.
Personality: Individual differences that may buffer stress or influence behavior.
Coping Strategies: Methods for managing stress that improve treatment adherence.
Culture: Norms involving health-seeking behavior and illness beliefs.
The Role of Beliefs
Beliefs about illness specifically influence outcomes. Doctor Ali Ekrum's research on cancer patients found that those who believe cancer is "manageable" have different experiences and outcomes compared to those who view it as an "overwhelming catastrophe."
Beliefs about stress are equally influential. High stress only correlates with poor health outcomes when combined with the belief that stress is harmful. Those who believe stress is "enhancing" or helps them perform do not show the same negative biological effects.
Interprofessional Practice
No single profession holds the entire picture of a person's health. Interprofessional practice involves students or workers from two or more professions learning with and from each other to provide collaborative care.
The patient/client must remain at the center of the team.
Four core competencies for effective teams include:
Values and Ethics: Maintaining mutual respect and the dignity of the patient. Avoiding professional elitism (e.g., an Occupational Therapist dismissing a Speech Pathologist).
Roles and Responsibilities: Knowing one's own scope of practice and respecting the scope of others.
Communication: Using plain language and avoiding professional jargon (e.g., explaining terms like DAS, PTSD, or lipids). Utilizing active constructive responding, which involves listening to both the words and the emotions of others.
Teamwork: Shared goals, shared accountability, and the ability to engage in constructive disagreement.
Social and Emotional Wellbeing (SEWB) Model
The SEWB model is an indigenous (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) understanding of health, which views the self as inseparable from seven domains of connection:
Connection to body and behaviors (physical health).
Connection to mind and emotions.
Connection to family and kinship.
Connection to community.
Connection to culture.
Connection to country and land.
Connection to spirit and ancestors.
In this model, well-being is achieved through the collective harmony of these connections, rather than seeing the self as a separate entity.
Research Designs in Applied Psychology
Intervention Studies: These test the effect of a treatment or program (e.g., using GLP-s for weight loss). The gold standard is the Double-Blind Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT), where neither the participants nor the researchers know who is receiving the treatment vs. the placebo.
Systematic Reviews: Secondary research that identifies, appraises, and synthesizes all available studies on a specific, pre-specified question (e.g., "Does mindfulness improve anxiety in teenagers?").
Meta-analysis: A statistical step beyond a systematic review. It pulls data from multiple studies into one large data set to calculate an "average effect size," providing a more confident estimate of an intervention's effectiveness.
Questions & Discussion
Health Behaviors (Exercise): A participant noted they are more active now than in adolescence due to "maturity." The facilitator clarified that this suggests an internal shift where the behavior feels personally important, whereas in adolescence, social dynamics (like organized sports) might have been the primary driver.
Family Habits: Participants identified family dinners as a habit that promotes connection and communication. It was noted that while many grew up with this, fewer maintain it as adults, representing a potential area for health intervention.
Cultural Differences in Exercise: A participant noted that Australia's culture strongly emphasizes swimming, making it a desirable social activity. The facilitator contrasted this with their own experience in New Zealand, where a lack of positive cultural framing (cold pools, perceived as punishment) led to aversive associations with the sport.
COVID-19 and Inequality: Discussion highlighted that those in casual employment or lower socioeconomic positions suffered more during the pandemic due to the inability to work from home or lack of digital resources like laptops and Wi-Fi for schooling.
Interprofessional Roles for Diabetes: Participants identified several roles necessary for a type 2 diabetes case conference, including an endocrinologist, dietitian, GP, and psychologist. The psychologist's role was defined as focusing on the behavioral and mental health aspects that other physical-health-focused roles might miss.