Health psychology

1. Health Psychology
+ =

2. Key Concepts
 Health Psychology: health is the influence of
both our physiology (diet/exercise) and psychology
(stress/social support).
 Lifestyle: the patterns of our everyday decisions
which characterize our behavior.
 Stress: personal response to events that threaten to
disrupt our daily behaviors.

3. General Adaptation
Syndrome
Alarm
Resistance
Exhaustion
COGNITIVE APPRAISAL

4. Autonomic Nervous
System
Sympathetic
 Fight or Flight
 Eyes open Wide
 Mouth Goes Dry
 Hr Increase
 Start to Sweat
Parasympathetic
 Maintenance & Refuel
 Eyes constrict
 Mouth Waters
 Digestion
 Blood away from
muscles

5. Relationship between
Stress & Health
Level of stress
(Holmes & Rahe, 1967)
Length of the stressor
(Cohen et al., 1998)
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
12 24 36
Health
Level
of
Stress
p. 498

6. Stress Buffers
Social Support
Optimism vs. Pessimism
Exercise
p. 503

7. Coping Strategies
Optimists
 Problem-focused
 Suppress competing
activities
 Look for social support
Pessimists
 Denial/ Distancing
 Disengage from goal
 Focus on their feelings
p. 503

8. Yerkes-Dodson law

9. Strategies for Health
Education
Health Belief Model (Becker, 1974)
PRECEDE Model (Green, 1984)
Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1977)
Stages of Change (Prochaska & DiClemente, 1983)
Elder, Apodaca, Parra-Medina, &DeNuncio
(1998)

10. Overlapping Ideas
 Strong positive intention
to change.
 Min of barriers.
 Posses the skills.
 “Believe” in the
intervention
 Perceive the behavior as
normal.
 Consistent with self-
schema.
 “Feel” good about the
behavior.
 Receive reinforcement
from your environment.

11. Health Belief Model
1. Perceived threat
2. Belief a behavior will
alleviate stress

12. Influence of Social
Factors
Individualistic Perspective
Religion
Cultural/Social Isolation
– SES
– acculturation

13. Risk Factors & Wellness
Risk Factors
Smoking
Diet
Exercise
Alcohol
Interventions
Social Support
Contingency Contracts
Extinction
Drug therapy
Problems
Cardiovascular
Cancer
Overweight
Korsokov’s
Risky Behaviors

14. Prevention
Primary Prevention: reduce the
occurrence of the illness.
– Gain Framing
Secondary Prevention: decrease the
severity of the illness. Importance of early
detection.
– Loss Framing