13.1 Biopsychosocial and Behavioral Contributions to Health

• Health psychology: Study of how cognitive and behavioral principles can be used to prevent illness and promote physical well-being.

• Behavioral medicine: A medical specialty focused on the study of nonbiological factors influencing physical health and illness.

• Hardy personality: A personality style associated with superior stress resistance.

  Behavioral That Influence Health

• Lifestyle disease: A disease related to health-damaging personal habits.

  Behavioral Risk Factors

• Behavioral risk factors: Behaviors that increase the chances of disease, injury, or premature death.

  Early Prevention

• Refusal skills training: A program that teaches youths how to resist pressures to begin smoking (also can be applied to other drugs and health risks).

• Life skills training: A program that teaches stress reduction, self-protection, decision-making, self-control, and social skills.

• Community Health Campaign: A community-wide education program that provides information about how to learn risk factors and promote health

  13.2 Stress and Health

• Stress: Pressure or demand placed on an organism to adjust or adapt.

  Types of Stressors

• Stressor: Specific condition or event that challenges or threatens a person.

  Life Events

• Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS): A scale that rates the impact of various life events on the likelihood of illness.

  Hassles

• Hassle (microstressor): Any distressing, day-to-day annoyance.

  Responding to Stressors

  Primary and Secondary Appraisals

• Primary appraisal: Deciding if a situation is relevant to oneself and if it is a threat.

• Secondary appraisal: Deciding how to cope with a threat or challenge.

  General Adaption Syndrome

• General adaption syndrome: Three-stage model of stress response, consisting of alarm, resistance, and exhaustion.

• Alarm reaction: The first stage of the general adaption syndrome, during which body resources are mobilized to cope with a stressor.

• Stage of resistance: The second stage of the general adaption syndrome, at which time the body’s sources are exhausted and serious health consequences occur.

• Stage of exhaustion: The third stage of the general adaption syndrome, at which time the body’s resources are exhausted and serious health consequences occur.

  Consequences of Stress

  Illness and Psychosomatic Disorders

• Psychoneuroimmunology: Study of the links among behavior, stress, disease, and the immune system.

• Psychosomatic disorders: Illnesses in which psychological factors contribute to bodily damage or to damaging changes in bodily functioning.

  Learned Helplessness

• Learned helplessness: Belief that one cannot control the outcome of events.

• Depression: A state of despondency marked by feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness.

• Mastery training: Reinforcement of responses that lead to mastery of a threat or control over one’s environment.

  Burnout

• Burnout: A work-related condition of mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion.

  13.3 Improving Health with Treatment

  Recognizing Illness

• Somatic symptom disorder (hypochondriasis): A disorder in which people convert general distress into excessive worry that they are seriously ill or dying.

  Types of Treatment

• Complementary and alternative medicine: A rang of treatments that emphasize importance of attention to the mind, spirit, and environment, as well as the body.

• Treatment noncompliance: Failure to comply with a treatment recommended by a healthcare provider.

  13.4 Improving Health Through Coping

• Coping: A tendency to change cognitions and behaviors to manage illness and more general life demands.

  Strategies for Coping

• Problem-focused coping: Directly managing or remedying a stressful or threatening situation.

• Emotion-focused coping: Managing or controlling one’s emotional reaction to a stressful or threatening situation.

• Relationship-focused coping: Using relationships as a means of managing a stressful or threatening situation.

  Managing Traumatic Stress

• Traumatic stresses: Extreme events that cause psychological injury or intense emotional pain.

• Acculturative stress: Stress caused by the many changes and adaptions required when a person moves to a foreign culture.

  13.5 Psychology and Your Skill Set: Stress Management

• Stress management: The application of cognitive and behavioral strategies to reduce stress and improve coping skills.

  Managing Bodily Effects

  • Exercise

  • Meditation

  • Progressive relaxation: A method for producing deep relaxation of all parts of the body.

  • Guided imagery: Intentional visualization of images that are calming, relaxing, or beneficial in other ways.

  Coping Statements

• Social support: Close, positive relationships with other people.

• Stress inoculation: Use of positive coping statements to control fear and anxiety.

• Negative self-statements: Self-critical thoughts that increase anxiety and lower performance.

• Coping statements: Reassuring, self-enhancing statements that are used to stop self-critical thinking.

Chapter in Review:

13.1 Biopsychosocial and Behavioral Contributions to Health

13.1.1 Distinguish between the medical and biopsychosocial models in terms of their conceptions of health

The medical model emphasized that the body is like a biological machine, and that physical illness requires a physical treatment (i.e., medicine). The mind, spirit, and social context are not considered important to health in this model. The biopsychosocial model adopts a more holistic approach and assumes that good health is a function of biological, psychological, and social factors.

13.1.2 Explain the biological, psychological, and social factors that influence health

Biological factors influencing health include genetic (and epigenetic) factors, as well as the functioning of a number of bodily systems including the nervous, endocrine, cardiovascular, respiratory, digestive, reproductive, and immune systems. Induce amnesia, relieve pain, and alter sensory experiences and motivation. Particular attention has been paid to personality characteristics, especially those that characterize the Type A and hardy personalities. Finally, two social environmental factors that have received attention include our social networks and poverty.

13.1.3 Outline the main behavioral risk factors that contribute to poor health

The main behavioral factors contributing to poor health include smoking, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, poor diet, insufficient exercise, and risky sex.

13.1.4 Describe three strategies that help to minimize behavioral risk factors

Three strategies that can be used to reduce the risk posed by these behavioral risk factors are making healthy life-style changes, engaging in early prevention, and engaging in community health and social media campaigns

13.2 Stress and Health

13.2.1 Distinguish between two types of stressors: life events and hassles

Stress is the mental and physical condition that occurs when we adjust or adapt to the environment. A stressor is a condition or event that challenges or threatens a person. Life events refer to stressors (both good and bad) that are larger scale, such as getting married or divorced, losing your job, or getting organized for a major holiday. Hassles (or micro stressors) refer to stressors that are smaller in scope but ongoing, including a difficult commute to work or regularly having to deal with people making discriminatory remarks or inappropriate jokes at your expense. Research indicates that multiple life events tend to increase long-range susceptibility to health problems. However, one’s current health is more closely related to the intensity and severity of daily hassles.

13.2.2 Differentiate between primary and secondary appraisals, and outline the four factors that guide them

Primary appraisal is a broad-based and involves a basic decision about whether the stressor is positive, neutral, or a threat. Stress is intensified when a situation is appraised as a threat. During a secondary appraisal, we examine stressors in relation to our resources and select a way to manage stress. Appraisals are guided by beliefs about perceived control and competence to cope with the stressor, unpredictability of the stressor, and pressure.

13.2.3 Describe the three stages general adaption syndrome

The body reacts to stress in a series of stages called general adaption syndrome (GAS). The stages of GAS are alarm, resistance, and exhaustion. Bodily reactions in GAS follow the pattern observed in the development of psychosomatic disorders.

13.2.4 Describe three consequences of prolonged stress

Prolonged stress can be associated with illness and psychosomatic disorders (in which psychological factors contribute to genuine bodily damage), learned helplessness, and burnout.

13.3 Improving Health with Treatment

13.3.1 Outline the main features of somatic symptom disorder

Somatic symptom disorder, also known as hypochondriasis, is rooted in anxiety about general concerns; people convert this anxiety into a belief that something is wrong with them physically.

13.3.2 Describe how biological, psychological, and social factors contribute to our ability to recognize illness

In terms of biological factors, people are more likely to take symptoms seriously if they affect highly valued parts of the body, limit mobility, or cause pain. With respect to psychological factors, some personality variables (e.g., neuroticism), stress, and emotion all contribute to people’s ability to recognize illness. Finally, important social factors include the lay referral network (that is, informal social network) and the Internet.

13.3.3 Outline four factors that influence people’s decision to seek treatment

Four factors that influence decisions to seek treatment include sex, income, age, and culture.

13.3.4 Define what is meant by the term complementary and alternative medicine, and outline one main concern associated with this type of treatment

The term complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) refers to treatment approaches that tend to be more holistic in their approach and are often rooted in long-standing cultural traditions (e.g., traditional Chinese medicine; Ayurvedic medicine). They include homeopathy and dietary supplements, acupuncture, chiropractic services, massage, biofeedback, and yoga. The one main concern with these forms of treatment stems from a lack of good research evaluating their effectiveness.

13.3.5 Identify the forms that treatment noncompliance can take, describe four factors that contribute to treatment noncompliance, and outline the key to minimizing treatment noncompliance

Treatment noncompliance results when people ignore, misunderstand, forget, or carry out treatments incorrectly. Four factors that contribute to noncompliance include cognitive factors, memory, the relationship between care providers and recipients, and emotions (particularly anxiety and depression). Minimizing noncompliance requires that healthcare providers use good communication and interpersonal skills to build a trusting relationship with patients and clients. Doing so will increase the likelihood that they are able to ensure that patients understand the treatment, promote a willingness to abide by it, and will improve the ability to properly assess clients’ ability to follow through with it.

13.4 Improving Health Through Coping

13.4.1 Distinguish between problem-focused, emotion-focused, and relationship-focused coping

Problem-focused coping involves directly managing or remedying a stressful or threatening situation. Emotion-focused copying relies on managing or controlling one’s emotional reaction to a stressful or threatening situation. Defense mechanisms are a specific type of emotion-focused coping, and they are used to avoid, deny, or distort sources of threat or anxiety, including threats to one’s elf image. Relationship-focused coping is based on the idea that our relationships are important and that we are motivated to preserve them by engaging in strategies such as demonstrating empathy, compromising, and providing social support.

13.4.2 Explain the effects of traumatic stress, and some strategies for coping with it

Traumatic stress can have wide-ranging effects that are both physical (e.g., hypertension) and psychological (anxiety, feelings of vulnerability). Strategies to manage it rely on problem-, emotion-, and relationship-based coping, including talking to others (including professionals), engaging in enjoyable activities, and giving yourself time to heal.

13.4.3 Identify the four main patterns of coping with acculturation, and the level of acculturative stress associated with each one

Acculturative stress arises during adaption to a foreign culture. Four acculturative patterns are integration (associated with low acculturative stress), separation (associated with high acculturative stress), assimilation (associated with moderate acculturative stress), and marginalization (associated with high acculturative stress).

13.4.4 Describe some of the factors that contribute to the “college blues,” and some strategies for coping with the problem

The college blues are a relatively mild form of depression that stem from such things as pressure to find a career, isolation and loneliness, problems with grades, relationships problems, and challenges living up to expectations. Coping with the college blues may include problem-focused strategies (e.g., creating a schedule and working steadily at tasks to avoid being overwhelmed), emotion-focused strategies (e.g., challenging self-critical and negative emotions), and relationship-focused strategies (e.g., seeking social support and professional help as needed).

13.5 Psychology and Your Skill Set: Stress Management

13.5.1 Name three effects that are triggered by stress

Three effects triggered by stress include: bodily effects, ineffective behavior, and upsetting thoughts.

13.5.2 Create a plan to manage each of these stress-induced effects

All of the following are good ways to manage bodily reactions to stress: Exercise, meditation, progressive relaxation, and guided imagery. To minimize ineffective behavior when you are stressed, you can slow down, get organized, balance work and relaxation, accept your limits, seek social support, and write about your feelings. Learning to use coping statements is a good way to combat upsetting thoughts.