Health Psychology Flashcards
What are the 4 main benefits of having effective working relationships?
Increased job satisfaction
Increased productivity
Reduced staff turnover (as people don’t leave as often)
Less stress (due to supportive colleagues and better relationships)
What are the 2 stages of chronic stress?
General Alarm –> 6-48 hours theres a reduction in fat tissue, lymph gland and liver size
Resistance Stage –> 48+ hours the adrenal glands are enlarged, with a reduction in pituitary gland hormones
Define Psychoneuroimmunology
The study of how mental states affect the nervous and immune system (usually focussed on stress)
Has shown that when stressed, wounds take longer to heal!
Define Harassment and Bullying
Harassment –> Unwanted conduct affecting the dignity of men and women in the workplace
Bullying –> Characterised as offensive, intimidating, malicious or insulting behaviour or an abuse of authority through means intended to undermine, denigrate or injure the recipient
What is attention?
The process of focusing on a particular piece of information (could be a stimuli, memory, location etc)
It has a limited capacity
Underpinned by the prefrontal cortex and orbital frontal complex
Explain Broadbent’s Filter Model of Selective Attention
What is its main fault?
States that we filter out all unneccesary information
The long term memory is limitless
Fault –> Cannot explain the cocktail party effect (hearing your name in a loud environment from a long distance away)
What are the 5 asepcts of the working memory model?
Phonological loop –> Limited store of auditory loops
Visuo-Spatial Scratchpad –> Used to hold images/spatial information in the mind and manipulate them
Episodic Buffer –> Integrates different aspects of information in the working memory and links to the long-term memory
Central Executive –> Similar to attention
Episodic Memory (memory of past events) –> Underpinned by language and visual semantics
Explain Bower’s Long Term Human Associative Memory model
Memories and events are stored in neural networks, which when activated, can cause them to be reconstructed
Nodes –> Emotions/Concepts/Events/Behaviours
Connections –> Can be excitatory or inhibtory
Activation –> Spreads through the network
Supra-Threshold Activation –> Leads to consious awarenesses
Stimuli –> Can be internal or external
What are the 5 developmental changes that occur in children/adolescents as they grow?
Physical
Cognitive
Emotional
Social
Behavioural
What age category has the highest likelihood to have risk-taking behaviours?
Male adolescents
What are the 3 health trends in adolescents that are currently on the rise?
Self-Harm
Hospital admissions for asthma
Chlamydia diagnosis in women
What are the effects that can occur to guys and girls that mentally develop earlier or later than normal
What changes occur in the brain of a growing adolescent?
Decrease in grey matter
Increase in white matter
Changes in pre-frontal and limbic regions
What is Adolescent Egocentrism?
Being concerned about how other view them, and that because they care, other must also
As if they have an audience judging them 24/7
They feel like they are the centre of attention at all times
What are the 3 theories of Adolescence?
Difficult/Storm and Stress –> Conflict in life caused risk behaviours to occur
Focal Theory –> Can only focus on one thing at a time, and that one thing changes as they age
Developmental Contextualism –> Mix of theories that are based on 5 things (timing of events/context/continuity/fit in the environment/children are in control of their own development)
How do guys and girls coping methods differ?
Guys –> More likely to use more active coping skills
Girls –> More likely to look for emotional support (due to seeing stressors as more stressing than guys)
Define Health Literacy
The cognitive and social skills which determine the motivation and ability of individuals to gain access to, understand and use information in ways which promote and maintain good health
What proportion of adults (aged 16-64) in England does the NHS estimate do not have sufficient comprehension and numeracy skills to understand everyday health information?
61%!!!!
Which age group has the lowest health literacy in the UK?
65+ yr olds
What is ‘Nudging’ when undergoing a health intervention with someone?
Making the healthier action easier so that if the patient is unsure, the environment will predispose them to act in a particualr way (choose the healthier option)
Eg, get a free train ticket if you do 30 squats
What are Behaviour Change Techniques (BCTs) in healthcare interventions?
Small ‘active ingredients’ that make the intervention effective in changing behaviour
What is health promotion?
The process of enabling people to increase control over and improve their health
What are the 5 health promotion approaches?
Medical –> To prevent disease (eg, screening for clamidiya)
Behvaiour Change –> To change behaviours that increase risk
Education –> Provide information to increase informed choices
Empowerment –> To enable community to improve health
Social Change –> To adress health inequalities
What is the COM-B model of behaviour?
Capability –> Can the person perform the behaviour?
Opportunity –> Does the persons environment allow them to do the behaviour?
Motivation –> Does the person want to perform the behaviour
Behaviour
What are the 3 stages of the Behavioural Change Wheel (BCW)?
Step 1 –> Understading the behaviour
- Defined as something that we can see somebody perform
Step 2 –> Selecting the statagies for intervention
Step 3 –> Decide the detail of what is going into your intervention
- Eg, BCTs
Define Acceptability
The extent to which people delivering or recieving an intervention consider it to be appropriate, based on anticipated or experienced cognitive and emotional responses to the intervention
Define Feasibility & Generalizability
Feasilbility –> Considers whether an intervention can be deleivered in practise
Generalizability –> Whether an intervention will work elsewhere
- Eg, thinking about barriers
