The Changing Field of Health

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The Changing Field of Health

• 1900 most disease short-term infectious
• Now Behavior and lifestyle underlying causes of
  most disease
• Need for a better approach than the biomedical
  model
• Chronic disease leading cause of death in USA and
  industrialized world.

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Causes of death

• Heart disease
• Cancer
• Stroke
• Alzheimers and Parkinsons increasing as
  population ages
• USA 17th in world in life expectancy

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Ethnicity

• Economic status
• Educational level
• African Americans have higher rates of health
  problems than European Americans
• Hispanic Americans not as negatively affected

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Life Expectancy

• 1900 47.3
• 2002 77
• Decline in infant mortality largest factor

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Escalating Cost of Medical Care

• 19751998 600 rise
• 13 of GNP

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What is health?

• Adam
• Healthy diet
• Non-smoker
• Exercises
• Adequate sleep
• Occasional beer

• Robert
• Doritos, Pepsi
• Smoker
• Inactive
• Sleep deprived
• Frequently drunk

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Health?

• World Health Organization
• Complete state of well-being
• Physical
• Mental
• Social
• Optimum health is wellness

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Health Psychology Focus

• Health promotion and maintenance
• How can we encourage children to develop healthy
  food habits?
• What would be effective in promoting regular
  exercise?
• How can we design a media campaign that gets
  people to improve their diets?

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Focus..

• Prevention and treatment of illness
• High stress jobs how do you help people to learn
  and practice stress reduction/prevention
  techniques?
• How do you influence people who are ill to follow
  treatment regimens?

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Focus

• Causality (Etiology)
• How does smoking contribute to illness?
• How does exercise promote better health?
• Health behaviors wearing seatbelts, using car
  seats properly

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Focus

• Improving the delivery of service
• Influencing health care policies

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Psychosomatic illness the mind body problem

• Freuds influence
• Unconscious conflict linked to disease
• its all in your head
• Dualism Renaissance
• Mind and body as separate systems

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today

• Mind body is one system
• The bodymind
• Candace Pert, Molecules of emotion The science
  behind mind-body medicine
• Shifts in thinking

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Shift Happens!
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Behavioral Medicine

• Concentration on behavior rather than mental
  factors in health and illness

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Behavioral Health

• More emphasis on health than on illness
• Health psychology influenced by both trends

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Emergence of Health Psychology

• 1976 Division 38 of APA

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