Health, Stress and Coping

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Important (#edcae9)

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Key Concepts:

1. Health Psychology & Risk Factors.

2. Stress & Coping.

3. Learned Helplessness & Depression.

4. Defense Mechanisms.

5. Stress Management.

Health Psychology:

Aims to use cognitive & behavioural principles to prevent and treat illness, and promote well-being.

Behavioral Risk factors:

• Lifestyle diseases: Diseases related to health-damaging personal habits.

• Some lifestyles promote health, while others lead to illness and death.

• Health psychologists work on reducing these risks, and increasing health promoting behaviours.

Social Risk Factors:

• Stress, education, poverty, social exclusion, discrimination and violence.

• Factors can act as protective or increase the risk of physical and mental illness and affect individuals.

Psychological Risk Factors:

• Attention, perception, cognition, emotions, motivation and personality.

• Friedman and Rosenman, studied heart problems and classified people as having either:

  • Type A Personality: Hard driving, ambitious, highly competitive. Higher risk of heart attack.

  • Type B Personality: More laid-back, flexible, easy going. Lower risk of heart attack.

  • Type D Personality: Tendency to worry, expresses many negative emotions, and is disease-prone.

Role of Personality:

• Salvatore Maddi studied on the ‘hardy personality’.

• Identified these individuals as being unusually resistant to stress.

• Described as:

  1. Share a sense of personal commitment to themselves, work, family etc.

  2. Perceive a sense of control over their lives and work.

  3. Sees life as a series of challenges, rather than a series of threats or problems.

• Hardiness and happiness are correlated; happy individuals perceive their lives more positively and sees setbacks as challenges.

Addressing Risks:

• Early Prevention: Parents, peers, community, education system.

• Health Programmes: Prevention programmes, self-protection, self-control.

• Community Health: Community wide education projects designed to lessen major risk factors.

Stress:

Stress is the mental and physical experiences that occur when we adapt to the environment.

Eustress: Positive, beneficial stress.

GAS:

Psychosomatic illness: Illness of psychological origins, that usually lack medical explanations.

General Adaptation Syndrome: A series of bodily reactions to prolonged stress; can be categorised in three stages.

1. Alarm Reaction:

   • Body mobilises its resources to cope with added stress.

   • Adrenaline is released to speed up or slow down some bodily processes.

   • Initial symptoms include headache, fever, fatigue.

2. Stage of Resistance:

   • Bodily adjustments to stress stabilise.

   • Body copes with original stressor better, but resistance to other stressors is lowered.

3. Stage of Exhaustion:

   • Continued stress leading to depletion of body resources and health consequences.

   • Emotional, behavioral and physical symptoms may occur.

Psychoneuroimmunology: Study of connections among behavior, stress, disease, and immune system.

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

Learned Helplessness:

Helplessness is a psychological state that occurs when an appraisal suggests that events do not appear to be controllable.

• An acquired inability to overcome obstacles and avoid aversive stimuli.

• Seligman experimented on dogs, where he had shocked dogs in a chamber. Some dogs were not allowed to escape from the painful shocks.

• In the 2nd phase of the experiment, when they could attempt to escape to avoid shocks, they just gave up and failed to try.

Depression:

• Depression is marked by the feelings of despondency, powerlessness and hopelessness.

• Widespread emotional problems, including symptoms of guilt, loss of appetite, fatigue, low mood.

• Learned helplessness may help explain the hopelessness of depression.

Burnout:

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

• Experiences may include emotional exhaustion, detachment, irritable, low mood etc.

• Those passionate about their work are more vulnerable to burnout.

Appraising Stress:

To appraise means to assess or evaluate.

There are 2 types of appraisals (Lazarus, 1991):

1. Primary Appraisal: Whether a situation is relevant or irrelevant, positive or threatening.

2. Secondary Appraisal: Assessing resources and deciding how to cope with a threat or challenge.

Factors:

1. Perceived Control: Think whether or not we are able to handle a stressful situation

2. Perceived Competence: Feels more threatening if we believe we lack competence to manage life’s demands.

3. Unpredictability

4. Pressure: When a person must meet urgent external demands or expectations.

Social Readjustment Scale:

• Holmes and Rahe (1967) developed a rating scale that rates the impact of various life events on the likelihood of illness.

• Impact is expressed in Life Changing Units (LCUs).

• Positive life events can be stressful as well as less positive ones e.g. marriage and vacation.

• To use the scale, add up all the LCUs for all life events you have experienced in the past year, and compare the total to the table.

Improving Health with Treatment:

• Income: Barrier to treatment accessibility, but also influences engaging in behaviours which prevent disease.

• Older adults less likely to delay treatment seeking as compared to adolescents.

• Depending on culture, may consider alternative treatments.

Stress Management:

Using behavioural and cognitive strategies to reduce stress and improve coping skills.

1. Exercise: Stress-based arousal can be dissipated through full-body exercise.

2. Meditation: Can quiet the body and promote relaxation.

3. Progressive Relaxation: Produces deep relaxation throughout the body by tightening all muscles in an area and then relaxing them.

4. Guided Imagery: Visualizing images that are calming, relaxing, or beneficial in other ways.

5. Slow Down: Try to deliberately do things at a slower pace.

6. Organize: Disorganization creates stress.

7. Strike a balance: Stress often comes from letting one element, especially work or school, being overdown.

8. Recognize and accept your limits: Set gradual, achievable goals for yourself

9. Seek social support: Close, positive relationships with others facilitates good health and morale.

10. Write about your feelings: Students who write about their upsetting experiences, thoughts, and feelings are better able to cope with stress.