Summary PSYC 314- Health Psychology Textbook Notes
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Course
Psyc 314
Institution
University Of British Columbia (UBC
)
Book
Health Psychology
In depth, detailed but concise textbook notes for chapters 1 and chapters 3 to 15 (all the chapters that the professor-- David King from the University of British Columbia covered in class).
With these notes, I ended the class with an A+ and an A in each exam I took.
Test Item File- Practice Test Bank - Health Psychology,Taylor,2nd Canadian edition
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Ch. 1- overview of psych and health
Objectives
- Define health, health psych, other terms
- Consider historical facts that led us to today
- Discuss roles/ functions of health psychologists
*Main concepts/ terms, basic history of health psych and its role today
illness/ wellness continuum
- Health is a positive state of well-being, not just the absence of disease
- Extreme illness: death
- Extreme wellness: optimal wellness (healthy signs and lifestyle)
Illness today and in the past
- Past north american ppl died of dietary (malnutrition, lack of vitamin B) and infectious
illnesses (viruses)
- Early settlers brought on epidemics of diseases when they arrived to N America
- Indigenous ppl died bc they’ve never been exposed to these diseases and lacked the
immunity for them
- had less genetic variation
- Forced to live the settler lifestyle and lost traditional food supplies
- Preventive measures started happening like improved personal hygiene, water
purification, better nutrition
- Moderation in diet and sexual behaviour led to fewer deaths and contractions
- After ww1, death from infection fell drastically and chronic illnesses (heart disease and
cancer)
- This is bc ppl survive longer and chronic diseases are more likely to affect old ppl
- Now, infectious disease deaths (eg. HIV) decrease and deaths from tobacco, chronic
diseases from obesity, and cardiovascular disease increase
- Leading cause for children is accidental injury, not illness
- Average lifespan increased in developed and industrialized nations
- Life expectancy depends on region and ethnicity (eg. Territories and Indigenous ppl have
lower expectancies)
Biomedical model
- Conquered many infectious diseases
- Dev antibiotics to cure illnesses caused by bacterial infection
Problems in health care sys
- Rising health care costs means more taxes
- But ppl are more aware of early symptoms in chronic illnesses (cancer) and can be
treated better
,Lifestyle and illness
- Changing ppl’s lifestyles: behaviour like washing and eating healthy foods reduces
chronic illnesses
- Risk factors: biological (fam history of cancer) and behavioural (unhealthy diet, smoking)
- Today’s high medical costs is from ppl’s lifestyles that contribute to health problems
(obesity)
- Engagement in healthy behaviour reduces risk of illness and early death
- Behaviour matters
Personality and illness
- Personality: someone’s cog and behavioural tendencies that are stable over time and
situations
- Low conscientiousness (disorganized, not thorough) and high hostility/ pessimism/
depression are at risk for chronic illnesses
- High positive emotions (happiness, enthusiasm) live longer and recover quicker from
illness
- 2 way street: illness affects emotional adjustment and outlook too (hopelessness, anger,
depression)
- Quicker recovery if you overcome negative thoughts
Emergence of the role of psych
- Medicine and psych are connected
- Conversion hysteria: symptoms were converted from unconscious emotional conflicts
Psychosomatic medicine
- Mind and body connection
- Problems with relationship w/ mom led to a bleeding ulcer. Resolution w/ mom fixed the
ulcer
Behavioural medicine and health psych
- To study to the role of psych in illness
- Behavioural medicine
- Interdisciplinary: wide variety of medical fields
- Behaviourism: ppl’s behaviour resulted from classical conditioning (stimulus
elicits a response through association) and operant conditioning (behaviour is
changed bc of reinforcement or punishment)
- Conditioning methods modify problem behaviours (anxiety, overeating)
- Emotions influence bodily functions (blood pressure)
- Biofeedback: bodily processes (blood pressure) are monitored to gain control over them.
Operant conditioning: feedback is reinforcement
Biopsychosocial perspective
- Biological (fam history), psycho (stress, overeating), and social (fam support) affect
illness recovery
, - Psychological factors
- Cognition: perceiving, learning, memory, thinking, interpreting, problem solving
- Perception and problem solving will affect your lifestyle and health
(smoking is bad for me, I will stop by doing xyz)
- Emotion: feelings affects and is affected by our thoughts, behaviour, and
physiology
- Positive emotions are less disease prone and leads to quicker recovery
- Motivation: gets ppl to start an activity and persist in it (quitting smoking)
- Social factors
- Who we surround ourselves w/ affects us (eg. peers smoke so we’re pressured
to smoke)
- Media, community, family, warning labels on products
Systems
- Def: dynamic entity that’s interrelated (eg. your body, your family, community/ society)
- The world’s systems (society, family) affects the person’s psychological (cog, emotion)
and biological systems
- Eg. his heart disease is affected by his family’s consumption of high calorie foods
and during leisure, him and his family watch TV and play games. This affected
him into adulthood too and interactions between biopsychosocial sys increased
his risk of heart disease
- Education abt health, managing stress, safe sex will decrease disease
- Using psychological methods reduces stress and leads to quicker recovery
- Social support from fam and friends are important
- Biofeedback and psych methods reduces chronic pain
Sociocultural factors
- Canada: heart disease and stroke
- Chinese ppl have less cardiovascular disease than European and South Asian ppl
- First Nations are more likely to dev heart disease
- Sex and gender are also variables
Social status and health
- Minority groups receive differential or unequal treatment
- SES affects ppl’s resources and prestige
- Homeless ppl and ppl in poverty are in poorer health and have shorter lifespans
Lifespan perspective
- Our health depends on where we are in life
- Different social supports, different abilities
Medicine
- Medicine provides an crucial foundation for health psych
, - Allows us to understand how psychological factors influence illness and how illness
influences psych outcomes
- Epidemiology: study of distribution and freq of disease and injury (identify risk factors for
health disparities within pop)
- Mortality: occurrence of death
- Morbidity: illness, injury, disability
- Prevalence: # of cases of disease
- Incidence: new cases of disease
- Epidemic: disease has rapidly increased
- Pandemic: epidemic increased internationally
- Public health: protect, maintain, improve health through organized effort in a community
- Sociology: focuses on human social life and social factors
- Anthropology human cultures
- Health economics: supply and demand for health resources
- Health policy: decisions, plans, actions taken by gov’ts
Genetic Diseases
- Sickle cell anemia: hereditary disease where sickle shaped red blood cells carry lil
oxygen and clump together in the bloodstream. Results in organ failure and brain
damage. Carribean/ African descent
- Phenylketonuria (PKU): cannot produce an enzyme for metabolizing phenylalanine.
Amino acid build up causes brain damage. European descent
Epigenetics
- Chemical structures around DNA governs how, when, how much a gene acts
Ch. 3- stress: impact and sources
What is stress?
- Unable to deal w environmental demands
- Feel tense and uncomfortable
- 2 components:
- Physical: bodily challenge
- Psychological: how we perceive circumstances in our life
- 3 approaches:
- Focuses on enviro– stress is a stimulus (demanding job, fam’s death)
- Stressors: challenging events/ circumstances
- Stress as a response– ppl’s reaction to stress
- Psychological (thoughts and emotions when you feel nervous)
- Physiological (pounding heart)
- Strain: psychological and physiological responses to a stressor
- Stress as a process– stressors and strains, and person-enviro relationship
- Transactions: continuous interactions and adjustments w/ person and
enviro affecting and being affected by the other
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