Health Psychology Flashcards
Symptoms
May not be as biologically based as they seem.
e.g. your up-bringing can influence what you focus on or consider to be abnormal.
Bio-psycho-social model
Engel (1974)
Health is a product of bio process (e.g. virus, tumour), psyc processes (e.g. thoughts and beliefs) and social (status, ethnicity etc).
It is a hierarchical model in 2 parts:
Social Hierarchy - Biosphere, society, culture, community. family, the person.
Organismic hierarchy:
The person, nervous & other systems, organs, cells, molecules etc.
Note that the person is what overlaps both spheres.
Alcohol
Bio - direct damage to health.
Psych - habbit, addiction etc.
Social - social pressure culture etc.
Stroebe (1996)
Health Psych = Applied Social Psych.
Looks at meanings and beliefs and their relationship with health behaviours.
Symptoms don’t tend to be viewed objectively - they are influenced in a top-down way by our experiences and memories. E.g. The symptoms that our parents drew attention to as children are the ones that become important to us as adults.
Social Norms
What is deemed important or illness is not static over time - it is influenced by social norms.
E.g. women’s menstrual cycles used to be seen as causing deviant behavior, which needed to be treated with hormone therapy.
Draw Venn Diagram of Biopsychosocial model
See L 15 on Mindly / Biopsychosocial model.
Medical Model
Lupton (2003)
Concerned with objective truth, science, status.
Importance placed on diagnosis and agreed treatments.
Can produce stats on morbidity etc.
Bio reductionism.
Biological reductionism
Reduce everything about the patient to the facts about the disease,
Medical model (IDs)
IDs are the result of bio diffs.
Medical Model (treatment)
Aim is to find a cure through elimination of underlying pathology.
Diagnosis is crucial.
Challenges to the medical model
The rank of biggest killers has changed sig since 1900.
Diseases such as Diptheria have been largely erradicated whereas heart disease, stroke, cancer are widespread.
Diseases of poverty => diseases of affluence.
Acute => chronic illness
Suggests that managing chronic disease and behaviour around it is more imp. Health Psych can predict and change beh so more imp now than ever.
Medical model is seen as an objective truth but it’s just a paradigm, social construct.
Power
There is a hierarchy to what gets treated - who decides how this should be organised? Male orientated etc.
Physiological response to stress
Flight or fight (Canon, 1932).
Cortisol up => Pupils dilate, increased heart rate, blood to muscles etc.
Everything is preparing body for fight or running away.
But this can become chronic and lead to exhaustion, auto-immune disease, heart diease etc.
Coping with stress
Effortful process.
Successful coping => amelioration / removal of stress.
Maladaptive coping => increased stress.
Coping mechanisms
Planning, seeking social support, religion, acceptance, denial, humour, alcohol / drug abuse.
Coping styles
Problem focused:
Active coping, seeking social support, venting emotion, mental disengagement.
Emotion focused:
Religion, seeking social support, acceptance, denial, humour,
Consequences of stress
Hypertension, heart disease, digestive problems (ulcers etc).
Substance abuse:
The type of substance can be influenced by sex. Women tend to abuse sleeping tablets and tranqs, men alcohol and cigarettes (Stroebe & Stroebe, 1995). Although this data may be out of date - women drink more now, cocaine use has been on increase etc. Diff to know why this is.
Why have stress?
We evolved a stress response to improve our chances in danger.
It is adaptive.
However the type of stressors we typically experience now are v different to those of the past. We don’t often get chased by lions but we are often chronically stressed by modern society.
Person / environment interaction and stress
Some people deal with it better than others - depends on both person and situation.
E.g. hearing loss more stressful for a musician. Exams more stressful if pressure being put on at home to pass.
Draw working model of stress
See L1`5
Draw Yerkes-Dodson Law (1978)
See L15/ stress / approaches / effects.
Prob: Underload can cause more stress than overload for some (Fletcher, 1988).
Life Change Units
Holmes & Rahe (1962)
Different events given different weighting:
Death of spouse (100), divorce, marital separation, jail moving house etc.
Probs:
Ppls with fewer life events can show more stress (Cooper et al).
Causes
Early research focussed on causes but what is stressful to one person might not be to another.
Poss explanation: P traits - E = novelty seeking etc. N = avoidance orientated.
Cognitive Relational Theory
Lazarus (1966)
“There is nothing good or bad, only thinking makes it so”.
Dynamic person x env interaction mediated by cog. Appraisal process of weighing up risks / benefits to wellbeing.
