Health Psychology Exam 1 Flashcards
Leading Causes of Death in the US
Heart disease
Cancer
What is healthy people 2030
U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services Report identifies key targets for improving human health and well-being by 2030
What are the 4 overall goals of Healthy People 2030
- Attain high-quality, longer lives free of preventable disease, disability, injury, and premature death
- Create social and physical environments that promote good health for all
- Achieve health equity, eliminate disparities, and improve the health of all groups
- Promote quality of life, healthy development, and healthy behaviors across all life stages
What were the goals of the Affordable Care Act
Decrease number of people who do not have health insurance
Lower costs of health care
Trephination Definition
surgery where early healers would drill holes into skulls to allow disease-causing demons to leave patients’ bodies
What is Nile Theory?
body has channels that carry air, water, and blood; people become sick when blockages occur
Humoral Theory
healthy body and mind result from equilibrium between the four bodily humors (blood, yellow bile, black bile, phlegm)
ex. headaches = excess of yellow vile
Qi Definition
vital energy or life force
— ebbs and flows with changes in each person’s mental, physical, or emotional well-being
Acupuncture, herbal therapy, meditation can all help put Qi back in balance (more on Complementary and Alternative Medicines at the end of the semester!)
Mind-body dualism (or Cartesian dualism)
mind and body are autonomous processes that are subject to different laws of causality
the mind and body interact minimially
What is the post-renaissance theory of health psychology?
- Physicians began to exclusively focus on the biological causes of disease
- Germ Theory
- Inventions and discoveries: microscopes, gas anesthetics, x-rays
What is the 20th century theory of health
Biomedical Model
States that illness always has a biological cause (or pathogen)
Fairly reductionistic
Consistent with mind-body dualism
Health is nothing more than the absence of disease
What were the 4 key goals of Health Psych according to the APA:
- To scientifically study the causes or origins of specific diseases
- To promote health and identify ways to get people to engage
- To prevent and treat illness
- To promote public health policy and improvement of healthcare system
Biopsychosocial Model
Health and longevity is multiply determined by biological, psychological, social, and cultural factors across the life course
Ecological Systems
viewpoint that nature is best understood as a hierarchy of systems in which each system is simultaneously composed of smaller subsystems and larger, interrelated systems
What type of factors are these: E.g., cortisol, APOE-4, how humans store fat cells?
Biological
What type of factors are these: attitudes, personality, wellbeing, stress, coping, drinking, smoking, exercising?
Psychological
What type of factors are these: relationships, social identities like gender, cultural values, air pollution, systemic racism, healthcare?
Sociocultural
What is the lifespan perspective?
Biopsychosocial factors are dynamic and change with age
Health is dynamic and changes with age
Developmental Cascades Definition
Early life can affect later life
What is evidence based medicine?
Medicine that relies upon the scientific method
and integrates best research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values
What is ecological validity?
A measure of how well a study’s findings can be applied to the real world
What are the advantages and disadvantages of an observational study?
Advantage
- Typically large samples
- Ecologically valid
- Measurement tends to be strong
Disadvantage
- Difficult to draw strong causal inferences (i.e., correlation does not equal causation)
Cross-sectional Design
people are assessed at one point in time
Longitudinal Design
people are assessed over time
Quasi-experimental designs
leveraging naturally-occurring differences between groups of people in an observational study
Pros and Cons of a Case Study
Pros:
- great depth
- Can inform our understanding of psychological phenomena
- sometimes it is necessary
Cons:
- unknown generalizability
What is the case study of Jeanne Calment?
Woman who lived to 122 years old and purposely drank coffee instead of eating breakfast
Which basic conditions must be met before a cause-and-effect relationship can be inferred?
- Evidence must be consistent and make sense
- Cause must appear before the outcome
- Must be dose–response relationship
- strength of association must suggest causality
- Incidence or prevalence of the disease or outcome must drop when the causal factor is removed
Incidence
Number of new cases of a disease or condition that occur in a specific population within a defined time interval
Prevalence
Total number of diagnosed cases of a disease or condition that exist at a given time
Relative Risk
ratio of the incidence (or prevalence) of a health condition in a group exposed to the risk factor to its incidence (or prevalence) in a group not exposed to the risk factor.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of studying behaviors/life outcomes?
Advantages:
Can be objective and verifiable
Outcomes are intrinsically important
Wide range of contexts (real or contrived)
Disadvantages:
Sometimes we can’t ”see” health
What are the advantages and disadvantages of informant-reporting?
Advantages:
Simple, cost-effective, lots of info
Fill in gaps with self-report
Disadvantages:
Do not see person in all contexts
Lack access to internal experiences
Biases
What are the advantages and disadvantages of biological testing?
Advantages:
Objective
Sometimes the only way!
Disadvantages:
Expensive to collect
Sometimes unreliable
Uncertain interpretation
What are the advantages and disadvantages of self-reporting?
Advantages:
Access to thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
Sometimes true by definition
Simple, cost-effective, lots of info
Disadvantages:
Biases
Reliability vs Validity
Reliability: consistency of a measure
Validity: accuracy of a measure
Face Validity
Face: whether the test, on the surface, appears to measure what it is supposed to measure
Predictive Validity
Predictive: whether the test predicts some criteria external to the test.
Convergent Validity
Convergent: whether a test correlates with other measures that it should correlate with.
Discriminant Validity
whether a test correlates with other measures it should not correlate with.
Construct Validity
the broadest type, includes face, predictive, convergent, and discriminant.
Can an unreliable measure be valid?
No
What are relative risk ratios?
ratio of the incidence (or prevalence) of a health condition in a group exposed to the risk factor to its incidence (or prevalence) in a group not exposed to the risk factor.
From group differences in quasi-experimental designs
P-value definition
probability that a difference of that size (or larger) would be found, if the actual size of the difference were zero
What is the five step framework for interpreting tables and graphs?
ORIENT yourself
WHAT do the numbers mean?
HOW do they differ?
WHERE are the differences?
WHY do they change?
What does the circulatory system do?
circulates the oxygen that the lungs breathe in
What do the bones and the skeletal system protect?
the central nervous system
What are the structures of the Nervous System?
brain, spinal cord, and nerves throughout the body
What is the function of the nervous system?
The cells of the nervous system are the body’s primary communication system
How is the nervous system relevant to health psychology?
The nervous system underlies the physiology of stress and pain responses.
How many neurons are in the brain?
40 billion
What does the peripheral nervous system contain and what two parts is it broken up into?
It contains all nerves in the body
Somatic and Autonomic
What does the Somatic nervous system do?
nerves that 1) carry messages from sensory organs (e.g., eyes, ears) to the CNS and 2) from the CNS to muscles and glands
The somatic nervous system is sometimes referred to as the voluntary nervous system, because the skeletal muscles of this system are under voluntary control, such as when we choose to get up and move across the room.
What does the autonomic nervous system do?
nerves that link the CNS with the heart, intestines, and other internal organs
The autonomic nervous system is often called the involuntary or automatic nervous system, because it controls the organs over which we do not typically have voluntary control.
What two systems is the autonomic nervous system broken up into?
The sympathetic (fight or flight)
The parasympathetic (rest and digest)
What are the structures of the endocrine system?
A complex network of glands and organs, especially the pituitary, adrenal, and thyroid glands, and the pancreas
What is the function of the endocrine system?
Endocrine glands release hormones (i.e., chemical messengers) into the bloodstream to regulate bodily functions
Which system controls slow acting bodily systems?
The endocrine system
What is the difference between hormones and neurotransmitters?
Hormones are produced in endocrine glands and are secreted into the bloodstream.
Neurotransmitters: Neurotransmitters are released by presynaptic nerve terminal into the synapse.
Hormones: Hormones are transmitted through blood.
Neurotransmitters: Neurotransmitters are transmitted across the synaptic cleft
What is the pituitary gland?
Alongside the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland acts as a master control system of the endocrine system
How does the pituitary gland relate to health psychology?
Regulates the amount of the “stress hormone” cortisol that is released by the adrenal gland
What does the thyroid gland regulate?
growth and the metabolism
what does the pancreas regulate?
Blood glucose
What are the three types of blood cells and their functions?
Red – carry oxygen from lungs into the body
White – immune sysyem
Platelets – keep us from losing blood when injured
Where do arteries carry blood?
From heart to the organs and tissues
What is blood pressure?
Blood pressure refers to the force that blood exerts against blood vessel walls (systolic = pressure exerted when the heart contracts to pump blood out; diastolic: pressure exerted when the heart relaxes as blood flows back into the heart).
What are the structures of the respiratory system?
The lungs and airways
What is the function of the respiratory system?
Enables us to inhale air and exhale carbon dioxide to supply the cardiovascular system with oxygen
Digestive System Structures
Digestive/gastrointestinal tract as well as salivary glands, pancreas, liver, gallbladder
Digestive System Function
Breaks down food into molecules that can be used for energy, growth, and tissue repair
Digestion relation to Health Psychology
A healthy digestive system is important for providing your body with nutrients that support health. When you are in danger or under stress, digestion slows.
The Immune System Structures
a network of capillaries, lymph nodes, and ducts, as well as bone marrow, tonsils, spleen, and thymus gland
The Immune System Function
Defends the body against antigens that can harm health, such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites, and foreign microorganisms
What does the lymphatic system do?
The lymphatic system circulates white blood cells throughout the body to patrol for antigens
What expands to cause swelling and inflammation when you are sick?
Lymphocytes
What do the lymphatic capillaries carry?
Lymph, a colorless bodily fluid formed by water, proteins, microbes, and other foreign substances that are drained from the spaces between body cells
What do lymph nodes contain?
Lymph nodes contain filters that capture infectious substances and debris, and then lymphocytes destroy those foreign particles.
What does inflammation do?
Inflammation isolates injured tissues, mobilizes the immune response, and promotes healing
Genotype
all the genes that a person inherits
Phenotype
observable characteristics of a person
What is DNA Methylation?
DNA methylation is a chemical process that adds methyl groups to DNA, which can alter gene expression and regulate protein production:
When does methylation begin?
Methylation begins before birth and continues across the lifespan, altering how genes are expressed in response to environmental events even after we are born.
How does DNA methylation relate to asthma?
DNA methylation seems to be one of the biological mechanisms responsible for the development of asthma in children who are exposed to air pollution at a young age. DNA methylation may also explain the effects of early life stress on increased vulnerability for later depression.
What is the difference between a health disparities and health differences?
Health disparities are not just health differences between groups
Health disparities are preventable
Health disparities are due to social injustices
Disparity or Difference: Incidence of skin cancer is higher among White U.S. Americans
Difference
Intersectionality Theory
Intersectionality is a sociological analytical framework for understanding how groups’ and individuals’ social and political identities result in unique combinations of discrimination and privilege.
What are the three goals of health disparities research?
- To document patterns of health disparities
- To understand how and why they exist
- To identify ways to reduce disparities and promote health equity through science, policy, and practice.
Equality Definition
Everyone gets the same resources regardless of social position –> equal resources but not necessarily equal outcomes
Equity Definition
People get different levels of resources depending on need –> NOT equal resources, but achieving equal OUTCOMES
Justice Definition
Removing the fundamental barriers that are leading to the disparities in the first place –> allocation of resources becomes irrelevant / unnecessary
What does the national institute of aging do?
Federal agency that awards researchers grant money to advance the scientific study of health and aging, including health disparities across the lifespan
What is minority stress theory?
An additional layer of stress that uniquely impacts LGBTQ individuals’ health
Suggests that engagement in risky health behaviors is not necessarily due to individual-level factors
Rather: discrimination, victimization, and harassment that result from heterosexism, cisgenderism, homophobia, and transphoboia directly impact LGBTQ people’s engagement in risky health behaviors, as well as mental and physical health
Are minority stressors chronic?
Yes
Are minority stressors socially-based?
Yes
How does maslow’s hierarchy of nees relate to health equity?
It can help explain how sociocultural disadvantage prevents individuals from engaging in certain behaviors and from achieving their full potential
With threats of safety and physiological needs, it is easier to ignore one’s higher-levels needs because the basic ones are jeopardized
What is the gender paradox?
Women have greater morbidity (disease-burden) than men, but lower risk of mortality (death) than men
Ie: Men experience more life-threatening chronic diseases and die younger, whereas women live longer but have more nonfatal chronic conditions and disability
The Immigrant Paradox
Observation that immigrants are “healthier” compared to US-born peers of similar demographic and socioeconomic profiles
What are 4 possible explanations for the Immigrant Paradox?
- Cultural and Behavioral Factors
- Migrant Selectivity
- Return Migration Selectivity
- Data Artifacts
What does data artifacts mean?
Immigrants are less likely to participate in major surveys of health for fear of outing themselves; only the healthiest immigrants participate in large-scale surveys documenting health differences between immigrants and non-immigrants
Confirmation Bias
a tendency to pay attention only to evidence that confirms what we already believe.
Epidemiology
A field that seeks to determine the frequency, distribution, and cause of a particular disease or other health outcome in a population.
Disease Vector
Any agent which carries and transmits an infectious pathogen into another living organism.
Morbidity
The number of cases of a specific illness, injury, or disability in a given group of people at a given time
Mortality
The number of deaths due to a specific cause, such as heart disease, in a given group at a given time
3 Fundamental Objectives of an Epidemiologist
- Identify the origin of a particular disease to generate hypotheses
- Evaluate the hypotheses
- Test the hypotheses
Prospective Studies
Take a group of disease-free participants and follows them over a period of time to determine whether a certain condition or behavior is related to a later health condition.
What does a relative risk of 1 mean?
There is no difference in risk between the two groups
What does a relative risk score above/below 1 mean?
A relative risk above 1.0 indicates there is a positive association (the exposed group has a greater risk).
A relative risk below 1.0 means the incidence or prevalence rate of the exposed group is less than that of the not exposed group
What are the two types of tissues?
Epithelial and Connective Tissues
What are epithelial tissues?
Epithelial tissues are sheets of closely packed cells covering body organs and other surfaces.
They also form glands that secrete hormones, breast milk, etc.
What are connective tissues?
Connective tissues are made up of more widely separated cells that bind together and support organs and other body tissues
Bone, cartilage, and tendons are types of connective tissues
Which two body parts work together to act as the master control system?
The hypothalamus and pituitary gland
Self Other Agreement
the degree to which self and informant reports agree
Shared Method Variance
the predictor and outcome are assessed the same way
