Health Psychology

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Key Concepts

Health PsychologyHealth Psychology: health is the influence of both our physiology (diet/exercise) and psychology (stress/social support).

LifestyleLifestyle: the patterns of our everyday decisions which characterize our behavior.

StressStress: personal response to events that threaten to disrupt our daily behaviors.

General Adaptation Syndrome

Alarm

Resistance

Exhaustion

COGNITIVE APPRAISAL

Autonomic Nervous System

Sympathetic Fight or Flight

Eyes open Wide Mouth Goes Dry Hr Increase Start to Sweat

Parasympathetic Maintenance & Refuel

Eyes constrict Mouth Waters Digestion Blood away from

muscles

Relationship between Stress & Health

Level of stress

(Holmes & Rahe, 1967)

Length of the stressor (Cohen et al., 1998) 0

5101520253035404550

12 24 36

Health

Lev

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f Str

ess

p. 498

Stress Buffers

Social Support

Optimism vs. Pessimism

Exercisep. 503

Coping Strategies

Optimists

Problem-focused Suppress competing

activities Look for social support

Pessimists

Denial/ Distancing Disengage from goal Focus on their feelings

p. 503

Yerkes-Dodson law

Strategies for Health Education

Health Belief Model (Becker, 1974)

PRECEDE Model (Green, 1984)

Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1977)

Stages of Change (Prochaska & DiClemente, 1983)

Elder, Apodaca, Parra-Medina, &DeNuncio (1998)

Overlapping Ideas

Strong positive intention to change.

Min of barriers. Posses the skills. “Believe” in the

intervention

Perceive the behavior as normal.

Consistent with self-schema.

“Feel” good about the behavior.

Receive reinforcement from your environment.

Health Belief Model

1. Perceived threat

2. Belief a behavior will alleviate stress

Influence of Social Factors

Individualistic PerspectiveReligionCultural/Social Isolation

– SES– acculturation

Risk Factors & Wellness

Risk Factors

Smoking DietExerciseAlcohol

Interventions

Social SupportContingency ContractsExtinctionDrug therapy

Problems

CardiovascularCancerOverweightKorsokov’sRisky Behaviors

Prevention

Primary Prevention: reduce the occurrence of the illness.– Gain Framing

Secondary Prevention: decrease the severity of the illness. Importance of early detection.– Loss Framing