This document provides an overview of key concepts in health psychology, including how lifestyle, stress, and cognitive appraisal can impact health. It discusses the general adaptation syndrome and the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems' roles in the fight or flight response. Relationships between stress levels, stressor length, and health are examined. Stress buffers like social support and coping strategies for optimists and pessimists are also summarized.

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