Introduction to Health Psychology Flashcards
Health psychology
Influences on how people stay healthy, why they become ill and how they respond
WHO definition of health
Complete state of physical, mental and social well being. Not just the absence of illness
Wellness
Optimum state of health
Etiology
Origins or causes of illness
4 goals of health psych
Health promotion and maintenance
Prevention and treatment of illness
Etiology and correlates of health and illness
Impact of institutions and health professionals
Trephination
Drilling holes in skull to release spirits
Who were the first to see the role of bodily function in health and illness?
Greeks
Humoral Theory
Disease arises when 4 circulatory fluids are out of balance
4 humoral fluids
Black bile
Yellow bile
Blood
Phlegm
Who proposed humoral theory
Hippocrates
Who governed medical knowledge in the middle ages
Church
What was the proposed cause of illness in the middle ages
God’s punishment
Who proposed mind- body dualism
Descartes
Psychoanalytic theory
Unconscious conflicts produce physical disturbances
Conversion hysteria
Convert conflict to symptoms through the voluntary nervous system so you become free of the anxiety it would normally produce
Dunbar and Alexander
Conflicts produce anxiety which becomes unconscious and takes a physical toll on body via the automatic nervous system
Psychosomatic Medicine
Bodily disorders caused by emotional conflicts
Eastern view of health
Illness is disharmony between body’s systems. Must restore balance
Biomedical model
All illness can be explained by somatic processes
6 assumptions of biomedical model
Mental and social factors are independent of disease
Reductionist
Single factor
Mind and body are separate
Focus on illness over health
Cant explain why somatic conditions dont inevitably lead to illness
Reductionist
Reduces illness to low level processes
Biopsychosocial model
Considers both micro and macro levels
Systems Theory
All system levels are linked hierarchically and a change in one level can evoke changes in other levels
3 implications for biopsychosocial clinical practice
Diagnosis involves biological, psychological and social
Treatment must involve all 3 factors
Patient/ practitioner relationship is important
Acute disorders
Short term illness from virus or bacteria that are hard to cure
What are the 3 leading causes of death today
Heart disease
Cancer
Stroke
Epidemiology
Frequency, distribution and causes of diseases in a population
Morbidity
Number of existing cases at a given point in time
Incidence
Number of new cases
Prevelence
Total number of existing cases
Mortality
Number of deaths due to a particular cause
Lalonde Report
Changing lifestyle and social environments will better impact health than changing healthcare
4 components of the Lalonde report
Biology
Environment
Lifestyle
Healthcare organization
Epp Report
Health promotion approach. Consideration of social factors
Health Promotion Perspective
Health is a resource linked to goals, learning and growing
Health promotion definition of health
Capacity of people to adapt, control and respond to challenges and change
3 Galen contributions
Greek, learned by dissection
Understanding brain and circulatory system
Diseases can be localized to certain parts
When did medical knowledge come to a halt
Middle ages
Who treated the ill in the middle ages
Priests
Descartes
Said the body works like a machine
What replaced the humoral theory
Cellular pathology
Why did mortality rates from acute illness drop?
Prevention and lifestyle changes
Percentage of cancer deaths that could be prevented by quitting smoking
25%
Primary intervention
Prevent illness before it develops and promote wellness
Secondary Intervention
Stop or reverse an illness after it develops
Tertiary Intervention
Facilitates coping with a chronic or terminal illness
