Contributions to Health Psychology / Understanding of Mind/Body relationship
Freud’s work on conversion hysteria:
- The viewpoint, originally advanced by Freud, that specific unconscious conflicts can
produce physical disturbances symbolic of the repressed conflict; no longer a dominant
viewpoint in health psychology.
Conversion Disorder:
- is a mental condition in which a person has blindness, paralysis, or other nervous system
(neurologic) symptoms that cannot be explained by medical evaluation
Psychosomatic medicine – basic definition, early influences
- Dunbar and Alexander
- A field within psychiatry, related to health psychology, that developed in the early 1900s to
study and treat particular diseases believed to be caused by emotional conflicts, such as ulcers,
hypertension, and asthma. The term is now used more broadly to mean an approach to health-
related problems and diseases that examines psychological as well as somatic origins
Biomedical model versus Biopsychosocial model (basic philosophy, advantages and
disadvantages)
- The viewpoint that illness can be explained on the basis of aberrant somatic processes and
that psychological and social processes are largely independent of the disease process; the
dominant model in medical practice until recently.
- Advantages: increases pop life expectancy as treatments advance, effective at treating
common problems and return people to a healthy state, can lead to advances in medical
technology, improve quality of life for people
- Disadvantages: Use of advanced medical technology and the health system to diagnose and treat
conditions is costly for governments, Does not address factors that lead to the development of
, particular health conditions, Not all health conditions can be cured, however they can often be
managed via behavior modification which this model does not consider, Paying for medications
and treatment via the biomedical approach can be expensive for individuals
- The view that biological, psychological, and social factors are all involved in any given state
of health or illness.
Advantages of the Biopsychosocial Model:
- macrolevel processes and microlevel processes
interact to produce a state of health or illness
- the mind and body cannot be distinguished in
matters of health and illness
- researchers have adopted a systems theory
approach to health and illness
Clinical implications:
- diagnosis should always consider biological,
psychological and social factors in assessing an
individual’s health or illness
- recommendations for treatment must examine all
three sets of factors
- the relationship between the patient and the
practitioner is significant
Social ecological model
- put into practice by developing strategies to address the social factors that impact the
health of your priority population (Institute of Medicine, 2003). “Ecological” means
multiple levels, beyond the individual.
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