Definition of health psychology Definition of Health Areas of health psychology Aims of health psychology Need and significance of health psychology Health psychology is devoted to understanding psychological influences on how people stay healthy, why they become ill, and how they respond when they do get ill. Health psychologists both study such issues and develop interventions to help people stay well or recover from illness. ..........aboutpsy.com

1. Nisar VP
Assistant Prof
Dept of Psychology
MES Kvm college Valanchery
Introduction To Health Psychology
1 aboutpsy.com

2. Overview
Definition of health psychology
Definition of Health
Areas of health psychology
Aims of health psychology
Need and significance of health psychology
2 aboutpsy.com

3. DEFINITION OF HEALTH
PSYCHOLOGY
 Field of applied psychology concerned with
psychological aspect of physical health
 Health psychology is devoted to understanding
psychological influences on how people stay healthy,
why they become ill, and how they respond when they
do get ill.
 Health psychologists both study such issues and
develop interventions to help people stay well or
recover from illness
3 aboutpsy.com

4.  Health psychology is a specialty area that focuses on
how biology, psychology, behavior, and social factors
influence health and illness.
 Medical psychology and behavioral medicine
 Behavioral medicine is the interdisciplinary field
concerned with the development and integration
of behavioral, psychosocial, and biomedical science
knowledge and techniques relevant to the
understanding of health and illness
4 aboutpsy.com

5. APA and Health psychology
 Division 38 of the American Psychological
Association is devoted to health psychology.
According to the division, their focus is on a better
understanding of health and illness, studying the
psychological factors that impact health, and
contributing to the health care system and health
policy
5 aboutpsy.com

6. Health
 World Health Organization (1948) - health as “a
complete state of physical, mental, and social well-
being and not merely the absence of disease or
infirmity.”
 Rather than defining health as the absence of illness,
health is recognized to be an achievement involving
balance among physical, mental, and social well-being
 wellness to refer to this optimum state of health
6 aboutpsy.com

7. Areas of health psychology
 Health promotion and maintenance,- includes
issues such as how to get children to develop
good health habits, how to promote regular
exercise, and how to design a media campaign to
get people to improve their diets
7 aboutpsy.com

8. Areas of health psychology
 Prevention and treatment of illness- A health
psychologist might teach people in a high-stress
occupation how to manage stress eff ectively so
that it will not adversely aff ect their health. A
health psychologist might work with people who
are already ill to help them follow their treatment
regimen.
8 aboutpsy.com

9. Areas of health psychology
 Etiology and correlates of health, illness, and
dysfunction
 Etiology refers to the origins or causes of illness
 Health psychologists especially address the
behavioral and social factors that contribute to
health, illness, and dysfunction
9 aboutpsy.com

10. Areas of health psychology
 Analyze and attempt to improve the health
care system and the formulation of health
policy
 They study the impact of health institutions and
health professionals on people’s behavior to
develop recommendations for improving health
care
10 aboutpsy.com

11. Matarazzo defined HP as
“the aggregate of the specific educational,
scientific, and professional contributions of the
discipline of psychology to the promotion and
maintenance of health, the prevention and
treatment of illness, and the identification of
etiologic and diagnostic correlates of health, illness
and related dysfunction and to the analysis and
improvement of the health care system and health
policy formation”
 APA accepted (1984)
11 aboutpsy.com

12. Aims of health psychology
1)Health psychology aims to understand,
explain, develop and test theory by:
a)Evaluating the role of behaviour in the aetiology
of illness
b) Predicting unhealthy behaviours
c) Evaluating the interaction between psychology
and physiology
d) Understanding the role of psychology in the
experience of illness
e )Evaluating the role of psychology in the
treatment of illness
12 aboutpsy.com

13. Aims of health psychology
2 Health psychology also aims to put theory
into practice. This can be implemented by-
a )Promoting healthy behaviour
b) Preventing illness
13 aboutpsy.com

14. Need and significance of health psychology
 Trends within medicine, psychology, and the health
care system have combinedto make the
emergence of health psychology inevitable.
1) Changing Patterns of Illness
2) Advances in Technology and Research
3) Role of Epidemiology in Health Psychology
4) Expanded Health Care Services
5) Increased Medical Acceptance
6) Demonstrated Contributions to Health
7) Methodological Contributions to Health
14 aboutpsy.com

15. Changing Patterns of Illness
 Major cause of death is due to chronic illness
 Acute Illness- disease with an abrupt onset and
usually a short course
 often the result of a viral or bacterial invader
 Chronic illness-illnesses that are prolonged, do not
resolve spontaneously, and are rarely cured
completely
 Chronic illnesses affect family functioning,
includingrelationships with a partner or children
15 aboutpsy.com

16. Acute Illness Chronic
Illnesses
Illness of short
duration,
Illness of long
duration,
Rapidly progressive Developing slowly
Need of urgent care,
amenable to cure
Need for wide array
of services,
managment
Eg; tuberculosis,
pneumonia
Eg; heart disease,
cancer, and diabetes
16 aboutpsy.com

17. Advances in Technology and Research
 New technologies now make it possible to identify
the genes that contribute to many disorders
 Helps to identifies the risk factors for disease, such
as a high-fat diet, and help peoplelearn to change
their diet and stick to their program
 Diagnosis and treatment
17 aboutpsy.com

18. 18 aboutpsy.com

19. Role of Epidemiology in Health Psychology
 Epidemiology is the study of the frequency,
distribution, and causes of infectious
andnoninfectious disease in a population, based on
an investigation of the physical and
socialenvironment.
19 aboutpsy.com

20. Role of Epidemiology in Health Psychology
 Morbidity- referes to number of cases of a disease that
exist at some given point in time.
 state of being unhealthy for a particular disease or
situation
 Mortality- number of death due to particular causes/
illness
 Crude mortality rate, Cause-specific mortality rate, Age-
specific mortality rate, Infant mortality rate, Maternal
mortality rate, Sex-specific mortality rate
20 aboutpsy.com

21. Expanded Health Care Services
 Health care is the largest service industry in the world
 Some individuals enjoy the very best health
careavailable in the world while others receive little
health care except in emergencies.
 Health care costs is so important
21 aboutpsy.com

22.  Health psychology’s main emphasis on prevention—
namely, modifying people’s risky health behaviors
before they become ill
 Health care industry employs many millions of
individuals in a variety of jobs
 Multidisciplinary
22 aboutpsy.com

23. Indian context
23 aboutpsy.com

24. Increased Medical Acceptance
 Increasing acceptance ofhealth psychologists within the
medical community
 Health psychologists in health care was largely confined
to the task of administering tests and interpreting the test
results of individualswho were suspected of being
psychologically disturbed
 Caregivers are increasingly recognizing that
psychological and social factors are important in health
and illness
24 aboutpsy.com

25. Demonstrated Contributions to
Health Health
 variety of short-term behavioral interventions to
address a variety of health-relatedproblems, including
managing pain, modifying bad health habits such as
smoking
 Behavioral medicine
25 aboutpsy.com

26. Methodological Contributions to
Health
 Research on health,cause and managment of
illness,how respond to illness and treatment
 Methodological and statistical expertise in health
care
 Experimentation
 Correlational studies
 Prospective and retrospective studies
26 aboutpsy.com

27. Reference
Shelley Taylor - Health Psychology (9th ed)
Edward P. Sarafino & Timothy W. Smith (7th ed)-
Health Psychology: Biopsychosocial Interactions
27 aboutpsy.com