Health Psychology

Definition of Health Psychology

Health Psychology is concerned with understanding how biology, behavior, and social context influence health and illness.

In 1948, the World Health Organization defined health as "a complete state of physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity" (1948).

Rather than defining health as the absence of illness, health is recognized to be an achievement Involving balance among physical, mental, and social well-being. Many use the term "wellness" to refer to this optimum state of health. 

Health psychology is concerned with all aspects of health and illness across the life span (Maddux, Roberts, Sledden, & Wright, 1986).

What is Health Psychology

Health psychology is the application of psychological theory and research to health, illness, and health care.

Health Psychology is devoted to understanding psychological influences on how people stay healthy, why they become ill, and how they respond when they do get ill.  

Health psychologists both study such issues and promote interventions to help people stay well or get over the illness. 

For example, a health psychology researcher might be interested in why people continue to smoke even though they know that smoking increases their risk of cancer and heart disease. 

Information about why people smoke helps the researcher both to understand this poor health habit and to design interventions to help people stop smoking.

Health Psychology vs Clinical Psychology

Whereas clinical psychology focuses on mental health and neurological illness, health psychology is concerned with the psychology of a much wider range of health-related behavior including healthy eating, the doctor-patient relationship, a patient's understanding of health information, and beliefs about illness.

Although its early beginnings can be traced to the kindred field of clinical psychology, four different divisions within health psychology and one allied field have developed over time.

The four divisions include clinical health psychology, public health psychology, community health psychology, and critical health psychology. The allied field is occupational health psychology.

Health psychologists may be involved in public health campaigns, examining the impact of illness or health policy on quality of life and in research into the psychological impact of health and social care.

Health psychologists work alongside other medical professionals in clinical settings, work on behavior change in public health promotion, teach at universities, and conduct research.

Health psychologists focus on health promotion and maintenance which includes many issues on how to get children to develop good health habits, how to promote regular exercise, and how to design a media campaign to get people to improve their diets. 

The health psychologist also studies the psychological aspects of the prevention and treatment of illness. A health psychologist might teach people in n high-stress occupation how to manage stress effectively so that it will not adversely affect their health. 

A health psychologist might work with people who are already ill to help them adjust more successfully to their illness or to learn to follow their treatment routine. Health psychologists also focus on the etiology and correlate of health, illness, and dysfunction. 

Etiology refers to the origins or causes of illness and health psychologists in health psychology are especially interested in behavioral and social factors that contribute to health or illness and dysfunction. 

Such factors can include health habits such as alcohol consumption, smoking, exercise, the wearing of seat belts, and ways of coping with stress. 

Finally, health psychologists analyze and attempt to improve the health care system the formulation of health policy. They study the impact of health institutions and health professionals on people’s behavior and develop recommendations for improving health care. 

Putting it all together, health psychology represents the educational, scientific, and professional contributions of psychology to the promotion and maintenance of health, the prevention and treatment of illness, the identification of the causes and correlates of health, illness and related dysfunction, the improvement of the health care system, and health policy formation (Matarazzo, 1980).

Conclusion

In this chapter, we consider why our the current state of knowledge about health and health care issues has virtually demanded the field of health psychology. 

To begin, we consider how philosophers have conceived of the mind-body relationship and how we have arrived at our present the viewpoint of the mind and body as inextricable influences on health.

Next, we discuss the trends in medicine, psychology, and the health care system that have contributed to the the emergence of health psychology. 

We then consider the dominant clinical and research model in health psychology, the bio-psychosocial model.