Summary Health Psychology subtest1
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Lecture 1: Health & Inequalities - Chapters 1 & 2
The illness journey phases:
Psychological, social and health processes influencing every stage
1. From healthy to ill →
- Perceptions of health
- Coping mechanisms
- Health beliefs
2. From symtpoms to care →
- Help-seeking behaviour
- Interpretation of symptoms
- Anxiety
3. Diagnosis & treatment →
- Coping strategies
- Emotional response
- Adherence to treatment
4. Revalidation and chronic care →
- Self-management
- Self-efficacy
- Social support
5. Palliative care
- Acceptance and meaning
- Grief and loss
- Quality of life
Behaviour, death and disease
Increase in life expectancy in the 20th century in Western countries led to a general belief
in the efficacy of traditional medicine and its power to eradicate disease.
→ World Life Expectancy: 72,56 years
→ EU life expactancy average at 81 years
→ Fall in mortality rates in the developed world → developments in education and
agriculture, improvement in public hygiene and living standards
Life expectancy increased due to:
, - Advances in medical technology and treatment
- Increased control of infectious disease through vacciation and improved sanitation
- Reduced birth numbers
- Slower population growth
Life expectancy varies:
→ Exposure to health risks and behavioural factors are thought to account for gender
differences
→ Vary between cultures and countries → political and environmental challenges
→ Lifestyle plays a role → diet, exercise
Our own behaviour contributes significantly to our health and mortality
Health risk: Factor that raises the probability of adverse health outcomes
Life expectancy: The life expectancy is the years that a newborn could expect to live.
WHO definition: average number of years that a newborn could expect to live, if he or she
were to pass through life exposed to the sex- and age-specific death rates prevailing at the
time of his or her birth, for a specific year, in a given country, territory, or geographic area.
Healthy life expectancy → whether gains in life expectancy are lived in good health as
opposed to in a state of poorer health, with some illness or disability.
,WHO definition: the healthy life expectancy is the average number of years that a person
can expect to live in "full health" by taking into account years lived in less than full health due
to disease and/or injury.
Changes in causes of death:
● 1900:
○ infectious disease like pneumonia, influenza and tubercolosis
● Nowadays:
○ shift from infectious disease to non-infectious and chronic disease
➢ Cancer is not in the top 10 globally → due to people living longer with other
illnesses they would have die from, they are reaching ages where cancer incidence is
greater
PREVALENCE → established cases of a disease in a population at any one time
INCIDENCE → the number of new cases of disease occuring during a defined time interval
What is health? - Chapter 1
Health is global → global health approches require recognising the growing diversity of
national populations and the shifts in population health, depending on national policy context
and healthcare investment, innovation and availability.
Health holds different meanings → for different people, at different times in history, in
different cultures and social classes or even withing the same family, depending on age or
gender.
Notions of HEALTH differ between:
● Individual differences in ideas about health
● Cultural differences in ideas about health
- Pain
- Addiction
, - Taking medicines
- Psychological illnesses
- Disability - curse/punishment of God (i.e. Africa)
● Changes over time/lifespan in ideas about health
- 18 century: health was an ‘egalitarian ideal’ → aspired by all, but less
available to the poor
- Mid-20 century: linked to ‘fitness to work’
- Today: Illness in terms of its effects on working lifes → research shows the
opposite
Exercise:
1. My bestfriend
2. 22
3. No chronic or important illness, healthy diet, non smoker, sporty, good mental health
Linguistic roots in “wholeness” → including mental and physical aspects
Lay definitions of Health:
Cox et al: 6 dimensions
❖ Not being ill
❖ Health as a reserve
❖ Health as behaviour
❖ Health as physical fitness and vitality
❖ Health as psychological well-being
❖ Health as a function - ability to perform one’s duties or meet role expectations
Herzlich:
❖ Health is generally viewed as a state of equilibrium across various aspects of the
person, encompassing physical, psychological, emotional and social wellbeing
Bennet:
❖ Health as ‘being’ → I am not ill → feeling
❖ Health as ‘having’ → health as a positive resource or reserve → symtpoms
❖ Health as ‘doing’ → health as represented by physical fitness or function →
performance
World Health Organisation:
“A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not the merely
absence of disease or infirmity”
Health is a complex issue and notions about what health is vary strongly →subjective
