+BRS 214Introduction to Psychology

Dawn Stewart BSC, MPA, PHD

+Introduction to Psychology

Why is the field of health psychology needed?

What factors have led to the increase of health Psychology

Changing patterns in illness

20th Century main causes of illness and death were acute illness. Such as ________

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Such as TB, Pneumonia and other infectious diseases.

They are short term illnesses.

This has been replaced with chronic diseases such as hearth disease, cancer and diabetes.

Chronic diseases main contributors to disability and death.

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Physical rehabilitation is an important aspect of chronic illness.

Chronic illness leads to:

Anxiety

Depression

Thoughts of suicide or suicide

Measures taken to improve activity level, physical independence, and ability to manage daily task will have positive effects.

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Physical rehabilitation of chronically ill or disabled persons involve several goals:

To learn to use one bodies as much as possibleTo learn to sense changes in the environmentTo learn new physical management skills

To learn necessary treatment regimen

To learn how to control the expenditure of energy

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Mental Health is critical in the success of physical rehabilitation

Patients usually have problems resulting from prior injuries or participation in physical activity early in life.

Problems worsen with age

Cognitive-behavioral interventions

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Cognitive behavioral interventions (CBI) are based on the simple principle that thinking (an internal behavior) controls overt actions (external behavior).

Therefore, through CBI programs (or curricula), persons learn new skills and new ways of thinking that can lead to changes in their behavior and actions, and ultimately affect their specific conduct.

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Modern behavioral and cognitive-behavioral interventions emphasize the role of learning and adaptation to the environment both in shaping and maintaining normal life functions and in the emergence of maladaptive symptomatology.

In essence, these approaches focus on behavior as important in its own right and often seek to change instances of disordered behavior via the application of clearly articulated basic principles of learning.

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Three basic, interrelated perspectives exist:

classical conditioning, which emphasizes the learning of associations between classes of stimuli

Operant conditioning, which emphasizes the learning of relations between behaviors and their consequences

The cognitive perspective, which emphasizes the role of idiosyncratic beliefs and misconceptions in coloring each of the two earlier perspectives.

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Physical Rehabilitation must also tackle the very complex and serious problem of adherence to a long term medical disease.

Cognitive and behavioral interventions may be needed to help a patient adhere to a long term care situation.

Behavioral interventions can be highly effective in improving the quality of life for people who have developmental disabilities and display serious behavior problems.

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Why have Chronic illness help spawn the field of health psychology.

- They are diseases that psychological and

social factors are implicated as causes.

- People live with chronic diseases for many years. ( Psychological issues may arise in connection with the disease.)

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Biopsycholigst: psychologists who study how processes in the body, brain and nervous system works.

Nerve cell activity is the source of all experience and behavior.

All sensations, thoughts, feelings, motives, actions (behavior) and memories stem from brain activity.

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Child development and interaction of nature (heredity) versus nurture (environment) are particular interest to psychologist. Why?

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Heredity: a person genetic make up influences his or her temperament, susceptibility to disease, potential cognitive abilities and much more.

Environment: Factors such as parental involvement, socioeconomic situation, religion. Personal experiences, and many others are important to Childs life.

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Heredity: a person genetic make up influences his or her temperament, susceptibility to disease, potential cognitive abilities and much more.

Some scientists think that people behave as they do according to genetic predispositions or even "animal instincts.

" This is known as the "nature" theory of human behavior.

Other scientists believe that people think and behave in certain ways because they are taught to do so.

This is known as the "nurture" theory of human behavior.

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Nurture, by contrast, refers to various external or environmental factors to which an individual is exposed from conception to death. These environmental factors involve several dimensions.

For example, they include both physical environments (e.g., secondhand smoking and prenatal nutrition) and social environments (e.g., the media and peer pressure).

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Environmental factors vary in their immediacy to the individual; they involve multiple layers of forces, ranging from most immediate (e.g., families, friends, and neighborhoods) to larger contexts (e.g., school systems and local governments) to macro factors (e.g., international politics and global warming).

To complicate matters even further, the factors in each of these layers influence and are influenced by elements within and outside of these layers. For example, the kind of peers a child is exposed to may depend on his or her parents' view of what ideal playmates are like, the local government's housing policies, and the history of race relations