Health Psychology

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Health Psychology
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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.

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General Adaptation Syndrome

• Alarm
• Resistance
• Exhaustion

COGNITIVE APPRAISAL
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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

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Relationship between Stress Health

• Level of stress
• (Holmes Rahe, 1967)
• Length of the stressor
• (Cohen et al., 1998)

p. 498
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Stress Buffers

• Social Support
• Optimism vs. Pessimism
• Exercise

p. 503
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Coping Strategies

• Optimists
• Problem-focused
• Suppress competing activities
• Look for social support

• Pessimists
• Denial/ Distancing
• Disengage from goal
• Focus on their feelings

p. 503
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Yerkes-Dodson law
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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)
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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.

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Health Belief Model

• 1. Perceived threat
• 2. Belief a behavior will alleviate stress

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Influence of Social Factors

• Individualistic Perspective
• Religion
• Cultural/Social Isolation
• SES
• acculturation

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Risk Factors Wellness

• Risk Factors
• Smoking
• Diet
• Exercise
• Alcohol

• Interventions
• Social Support
• Contingency Contracts
• Extinction
• Drug therapy

• Problems
• Cardiovascular
• Cancer
• Overweight
• Korsokovs
• Risky Behaviors

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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