2 - Health psychology

Question 1

What is health psychology?

Answer 1

The study of psychological and behavioral processes in health, illness, and healthcare. It is concerned with understanding how psychological, behavioral, and cultural factors contribute to physical health and illness

Question 2

Psychology aspects of health

Answer 2

How and why illness develops
How to stay healthy (avoid illness/maximise health)
Impact of illness
Management of illness
Treatment of illness

Question 3

What is the history of health?

Answer 3

• Hippocrates Humoral Theory of Illness: Personality tied to physicality
• Plato (+ Greek philosophers): Body separate from mind; little interplay between mental and physical health
• Galen: Localisation of illness; illnesses occur in one area of the body
• Middle ages: Little scientific exploration, bad health due to bad deeds
• Renaissance (Descartes): Mind and body communicate through brain, likened body to machine
• 18th century+: Massive advances; science, technology

Question 4

What is the pain pathway?

Answer 4

Particles from objects of harm are sent through tube to brain, brain sends command back through tube to area affected to initiate reaction

Question 5

What is the biomedical model?

Answer 5

• Acknowledges impact of physical health on mental, but not mental health impacts on physical
• This is primarily how health is treated in modern medicine

Question 6

What is the biopsychosocial model?

Answer 6

Contributing factors to health:

• Biology (genetics, immune system, neurochemistry)
• Psychology (attitudes, perception, emotions, appraisal, coping styles)
• Social (support, relationships, culture, status)

Question 7

What are stressors as a stimuli?

Answer 7

• Identifying stressful events and persons who are prone to stress

Question 8

What are stressors as a response?

Answer 8

• Identifying stress responses

Question 9

What is stress as a transaction?

Answer 9

Identifying reactions to potentially stressful events

• Primary Appraisal: First reaction to identify whether an event is harmful
• Secondary Appraisal: Secondary reaction to identify how well one can cope after primary appraisal

Question 10

How do we measure stress?

Answer 10

• Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS): A ranking of 43 life events in terms of stressor level (Stress as Stimuli approach)
• Hassles Scale: Measures people’s perception of everyday hassles. More accurately predicts physical and mental health than reactions to major life events (Stress as Transaction approach)

Question 11

What are different types of control?

Answer 11

• Behavioural Control: Ability to engage in behaviours to reduce negative reactions and experiences. This is problem-focused coping, and more effective in relieving stress than is avoidance-oriented coping
• Cognitive Control: Ability to think positively about negative situations or emotions. This is emotion-focused coping. This is effective in situations where circumstances cannot be altered
• Decisional Control: Ability to choose amongst courses of action
• Informational Control: Ability to gain information about a stressful event in order to prepare for it. This is proactive coping when we take steps to minimise problems before they occur
• Emotional Control: Ability to suppress and express emotions

Question 12

What are different types of control?

Answer 12

• Behavioural Control: Ability to engage in behaviours to reduce negative reactions and experiences. This is problem-focused coping, and more effective in relieving stress than is avoidance-oriented coping
• Cognitive Control: Ability to think positively about negative situations or emotions. This is emotion-focused coping. This is effective in situations where circumstances cannot be altered
• Decisional Control: Ability to choose amongst courses of action
• Informational Control: Ability to gain information about a stressful event in order to prepare for it. This is proactive coping when we take steps to minimise problems before they occur
• Emotional Control: Ability to suppress and express emotions

Question 13

What are different types of appraisals?

Answer 13

Challenge vs. Threat
- Challenge: Evaluated as within our capacity to overcome, likely to use active coping strategies
- Threat: Evaluated as out of our capacity to overcome, likely to use avoidant coping strategies
Disposition
- We all have a ‘style’ of appraisal we lean to
- Our default appraisal style may change over situations and over time
Extremity
- Major life events
- Hassles

How we interpret daily hassles better predicts our overall disposition, physical and mental health than our interpretation of major life events

Question 14

What are coping mechanism examples?

Answer 14

Reappraisal, acceptance, distraction, rumination

Question 15

What is the difference between problem focused and emotion focused coping?

Answer 15

Problem-Focused: Strategies that engage directly with the stressor

Emotion-Focused: Strategies that reduce negative emotion surrounding a stressor

Question 16

What is the difference between practical and avoidant coping?

Answer 16

Practical/Active: Coping that focusses on changing stressor and/or emotions

Avoidant: Coping that focusses on avoiding stressor and/or emotions – effective short-term but needed in conjunction with active strategies

Question 17

What is the link between stress and health?

Answer 17

Physiology (direct impact)
- Blood pressure, stress hormones, suppresses immune system
Behaviour (indirect impact)
- Less rest, less exercise, increased physical tension, poor diet, less social support

Question 18

What is the link between religion and health?

Answer 18

Religiosity is associated with good health
- Longer lives, better immune system, lower blood pressure, faster recovery
- Perhaps is correlation, not causation
- Reasons for causation:
Restriction of risky health behaviour
Increased social support
Better coping styles

Question 19

What is the psychology of pain?

Answer 19

• “Unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage.”
  – International Association for the Study of Pain
• Organic vs Psychogenic
• Acute vs Chronic

Question 20

Psychology of pain process?

Answer 20

Stimulation at locality > chemicals released > transmits message to CNS > travels to many brain regions > interpreted as pain

Question 21

How is pain psychological?

Answer 21

• Mood impacts severity of pain
• Nociceptive input can be manipulated to feel more or less pain
• Pain can be generated without nociceptive input&raquo_space;Predictive processing, aka the Baysian Brain
• Implication: treatment of chronic pain with psychological therapies

Question 22

What is a placebo?

Answer 22

• Positive recovery purely from belief and expectation
• Used in clinical trials to rule out placebo as reason for treatment results
• Nocebo: Negative version of placebo – expecting bad things and having worsened results
• Why does it work?
  » Expectancy Theory: Expectations influence outcomes
  » Conditioning: Conditioned association between prior treatment and current placebo

Question 23

What is the brain-gut connection?

Answer 23

• The gut and the brain communicate – what we eat impacts our mental health (and vice versa)
• Gut microbiota: Colonies of micro bugs living in the gut
• Gut-brain axis: Connection between gut/brain
• Gut microbiota impacts body’s immune system, stress response

Question 24

What is the Functional Gastrointestinal Diseases (FGIDs)?

Answer 24

• 32 individual diseases that disrupt brain-gut interaction e.g. IBS
• High comorbidity with health disorders
• Visceral Hypersensitivity
  Treatment includes:
• Psychological treatments have reliable, moderate impact on GI symptoms and distress

Question 25

What is the GI Treatment for Mental Health?

Answer 25

• Change of diet, probiotics, fecal microbiota transplants

- Research is currently inconsistent, although very good promise of mental health changes via diet