Week 6: Health Psychology (Chapter 8) Flashcards
Health Psychology
Branch of applied psychology concerned with studying the psychological impacts on PHYSICAL health.
Goals of Health Psychology
- Promoting and maintaining good health.
- Preventing and treating illness.
- Understanding the psychological factors contributing to the emergence of illness.
- Understanding and optimizing the health care system.
- Improving the overall health policy.
Biomedical Model
Health is primarily defined by the absence of illness.
- Illness is the result of psychological dysfunction that originates within the individual and can be remedied with medicine.
- Ill health is diagnosed and treated (not prevented).
- Mind and body are separate.
Biopsychosocial Model
- Health is determined by biological, psychological, and social factors.
- The primary model of health + illness underlying health psychology.
Social Variables of Health
Our social context can have surprising impacts on our health.
- Having a social support network can help us cope with stress.
- Social influence can affect our habits.
Navigating the healthcare system requires many social interactions and relationships.
Caring for others can lead to stress and burnout.
- ex. Health care professional burnout.
Health Promotion
Interventions to help people and communities engage in healthy behaviours.
- Such as eating healthy, getting enough rest, exercise regularly, etc.
Prevention
- Aims to reduce the probability of developing an illness/disease, or reducing its severity once it has occurred.
- There are multiple levels of prevention tailored to different stages of health outcomes: primary, secondary, and tertiary.
Primary Prevention Strategies
Strategies aimed towards healthy individuals to prevent disease.
- Ex. a school based program that educates elementary students about the health risks of smoking.
Secondary Prevention Strategies
Aimed to prevent those with a health condition from getting worse.
Ex. getting a mammogram to prevent cancer from getting worse.
Tertiary Prevention
Aimed to reduce the negative impacts of a health condition.
- Ex. undergoing rehabilitation to attempt to recover some skills and abilities that were lost because of a stroke.
Social Influence
The idea that interactions with other people can lead to changes in our attitudes, beliefs, values, and behaviours.
Persuasion
- A type of social influence in which a particular message or appeal is used to try and change someone’s attitudes or beliefs.
- Two types of persuasion: informational and fear appeals.
- Also known as Public Health Messaging.
Information Appeals
- A type of persuasion that provides facts and information about WHY engaging in target behaviour is desirable.
- To be effects it must be attention grabbing, clear, credible, attractive and relevant, and stimulate action.
Fear Appeals
A type of messaging persuasion that assumes people will be more likely to change behaviour if their fears are activated.
- Ex. anti-smoking ads
Fear-Victimization Paradox
Finding that people who are most fearful are actually the least likely to be victimized.
The Health Belief Model
The actions we take to safeguard our health are influenced by a number of factors:
- General health values (assumes that we have some interest in our health).
- Perceived susceptibility of illness (how likely we think that we will develop an illness).
- Perceived severity of illness
- Expectation of treatment success
- Self-efficacy (our perception of whether or not we have what it takes to carry out a behaviour).
- Perceived barriers and benefits (pros and cons).
- Cues to action (events or messages that act as triggers to get people to adopt healthy behaviours).
Theory of Planned Behaviour
The to change peoples behaviour is to alter their behavioural intentions.
Transtheoretical Model
- Also known as the stages of change model.
- People vary in their readiness to make changes to health behaviours.
- According to this model, people can be classified as being in one of five stages with respect to making a particular health behaviour change:
- Pre-Contemplation
- Contemplation
- Preparation
- Action
- Maintenance
- Pre-Contemplation Stage
- The 1st stage of the transtheoretical model.
- During this stage, people express NO intention to change their behaviour.
- Contemplation Stage
- The 2nd stage of the transtheoretical model.
- During this stage, people are aware that they should undertake a change and are seriously considering doing so.
- Preparation Stage
- The 3rd stage of the transtheoretical model.
- People in this stage are ready to make a health change and intend to do so within the next month.
- They usually start to take some action that will lead to their ultimate behaviour change.
- Action Stage
- The 4th stage of the transtheoretical model.
- During this stage, people are successfully modifying their health behaviour.
- They must be in this stage for 6 months before moving into the maintenance stage.
- Maintenance Stage
- The 5th stage of the transtheoretical model.
- In this stage, they continue to work to maintain the health behaviour change that they have made.
