Health Psychology and Illness
Health psychology is a specialty area that focuses on how biology, psychology, behavior, and social factors influence health and illness. Other terms including medical psychology and behavioral medicine are sometimes used interchangeably with the term health psychology.
Health and illness are influenced by a wide variety of factors. While contagious and hereditary illness are common, many behavioral and psychological factors can impact overall physical well-being and various medical conditions.
By looking at the patterns of behavior that underlie disease and death, health psychologists hope to help people live better, and healthier, lives.
Health psychologists work with individuals, groups, and communities to decrease risk factors, improve overall health, and reduce illness. They conduct research and provide services in areas including:
- Stress reduction
- Weight management
- Smoking cessation
- Improving daily nutrition
- Reducing risky sexual behaviors
- Hospice care and grief counseling
- Preventing illness
- Understanding the effects of illness
- Improving recovery
- Teaching coping skills
Today, the main approach used in health psychology is known as the biosocial model. According to this view, illness and health are the results of a combination of biological, psychological, and social factors.
- Biological factors include inherited personality traits and genetic conditions.
- Psychological factors involve lifestyle, personality characteristics, and stress levels.
- Social factors include such things as social support systems, family relationships, and cultural beliefs.
Tip!
If you are struggling to make healthy changes in your life, dealing with the onset of illness, or facing some other type of health problem, seeing a health psychologist is one way to help start you off on the right foot!
Source: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-health-psychology-2794907
Reflection exercise
What are your thoughts about the two-way relationship between health and psychology?
#Psychology #Health #Well-being
I think this is really under-looked in psychology. The 7cups directory doesn't offer this as an option. I was matched with a psychologist once under a benefit plan and his plan was to treat me as if I was depressed, and involved doing things that went against my medical advice.
