Health Psychology Chapter 1: Intro

Health: a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity

Etiology: the study of the causes or origins of health-related issues, including biological, psychological, and social factors that contribute to health and illness.

Health psychologist roles: Health promotion and maintenance, prevention and treatment of illness, etiology and correlates of health, illness, and dysfunction

Health psychologist focus: understand behavioral factors of health and find effective therapy/methods to change behavior in a way that will reduce risks and optimize health

Health psychology seeks to understand psychological influences on: how people stay healthy, why people become ill, and how people respond when they get ill

Behavioural medicine: an interdisciplinary field that focuses on the relationship between health and behavior

Early concept of disease: evil spirits cause illness

Early Greek concept of disease: humoral theory for temperament, illness, and personality types (4 fluids)

Middle Ages concept of disease: God’s punishment for wrong doings

Middle Ages placebo effect example: believing in god was connected to improvement in health; not believing hard enough would lead to worse health outcomes

Descartes Era: medicine focused more on bodily function than the mind

Biomedical perspective: invention of microscope and germ theory, physicians focused primarily on organic/cellular change and pathology until the development of widespread antibiotics

Psychoanalytic concept of disease: physical ailments linked with unconscious processes

Freud’s conversion hysteria: unconscious conflicts → tension and conflict → symbolic physical disturbances → decreased anxiety

Mind-body connection: the idea that psychological factors can affect physical factors, and physical factors can affect psychological factors

Psychosomatic medicine: disorders and disease can be caused by emotional conflict (stress/anxiety → ulcers)

Dunbar and Alexander’s process of disease: unconscious conflicts → anxiety → physical toll → illness

Behavioral medicine: Interdisciplinary field concerned with integrating behavioral science and biomedical science for understanding physical health and illness and to prevent, diagnose, treat, and rehabilitate

Behavioral medicine focus: objective and clinically relevant interventions that demonstrate the connections between body and mind

Gradient of reinforcement: greater time between behavior and reinforcement weakens the behavior reinforcement

Delayed gratification: time lag between behavior and reinforcement

Lower delay leads to: higher treatment compliance

Asymptomatic conditions lead to: lower treatment compliance

Why are lifestyle changes hard?: large delay of gratification

Physical health is inextricably interwoven with: the psychological and social environment

Current shifts in health: more attention on social determinants, increase in use of alternative, holistic, and complementary approaches to health and healing

Eastern medicine has emphasized the use of _______, which is now being used in Western medicine: meditation, mindfulness, massage therapy, acupuncture, and others

The commodification of Indigenous and Traditional Medicines:

Biomedical model: illness = abnormal bodily process; psychological and social processes are minimally relevant or irrelevant to disease process; emphasizes illness over health

Biopsychosocial model: health and illness are consequences of the interplay of biological, psychological, and social factors; emphasizes illness and health

Systems theory: all levels of BSP are linked so changes in one area will affect changes at other levels

Morbidity: number of cases of a disease at a given point in time

Mortality: number of deaths due to specific causes