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Lecture notes Health Psychology
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Lecture notes covering content from degree level health psychology. Covering aspects of illness, exercise and other health behaviours.
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PSY335 HEALTH PSYCHOLOGYLecture 1
What is health?
- Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely
the absence of disease of infirmity. (as defined by WHO)
- Health psychology is devoted to understanding psychological influences on how
people stay healthy, why they become ill and how they respond when they do get ill.
(simple)
- Represents educational, scientific and professional contributions of psychology to
the promotion and maintenance of health. The prevention and treatment of illness,
identification of the causes and correlates of health, illness and related dysfunction,
the improvement of the healthcare system and health policy formation.
What is health psychology
- Capitalizes on the skills and knowledge that it can offer to address health problems
- It is inherently multidisciplinary
- It overlaps with a number of other disciplines such as biomedical sciences, social
sciences and humanities/ law as well
- It was initially referred to as behavioural medicine
- Behavioural health is a preventative branch often referred to as psychosomatic
medicine
- Health psychology emerged as a more inclusive term to describe the involvement of
cognitions and emotions in health, not just behaviours
- Psychoneuroimmunology emerged at the same time
- These days health psychology is recognised as the most rapidly developing field in
contemporary academic psychology; with the key areas of growth and focus being
health behaviour change, stress and coping.
Why health psychology
- Holistic definitions of well-being
- Acceptance of psychological and social factors in people’s health
- Growing interest in holistic approaches to health
What makes people healthy or unhealthy
- Different social determinants of health
- Personal characteristics e.g. sex, age, ethnic groups
- Individual lifestyle factors include behaviours such as smoking, alcohol use and
physical activity
- Social and community network include family and wider social circles
- Living and working conditions include access and opportunities in relation to jobs,
housing, education and welfare
- General socioeconomic, cultural and environmental conditions such as disposable
income, taxation and work.
,Noncommunicable diseases
- NCDs kill 38 million peoples each year worldwide
- There are 4 main types;
- Cardiovascular diseases
- Cancer
- Chronic respiratory diseases
- Diabetes
- NCDs are considered disease of lifestyle because health behaviours play a key role in
their development, modifiable risk factors are important to reduce these risks.
The mind-body relationship (ancient views)
- Hippocrates proposed that illness was the result of imbalances within the bodys four
humors
- Blood or the sanguine humor is the red, haemoglobin-rich portion
- Plegm or the phlegmatic humor is present as the clear plasma portion
- Yellow bile of the choleric humor is present as a slight residue or bilirubin, imparting
a slight yellowish tint
- Black bile or the melancholic humor is present as a brownish grey sediment with
platelets and clotting factors
The mind-body relationship (medieval views)
- Disease as a spiritual problem
- During the renaissance there was a return to naturalistic explanations, the body and
mind seen as one
The mind-body relationship (modern views)
- The biomedical model
- Emphasizes the physical causes of disease and ignores psychological and social
factors
- The body is viewed as a machine and disease is the breakdown of the machine
- Based on mind-body dualism
- Based on reductionism
- The biopsychosocial model
- Engel 1977 proposed that biological, psychological and social factors affect health
- A systems approach with a hierarchy of levels and every level is interconnected to
other levels via feedback loops
- Each part of the system is both whole and a part so no dualism or reductionism
, Comparing the biomedical and biopsychosocial models
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