Resources and summaries taken from the lecture, slides and book chapter.
Resources
The Breakdown
Important
- Understanding discussed anatomy and physiology: Students do not need to memorise all detailed anatomy from the textbook (Chapter 2); they only need to understand what was discussed in class.
- Focus on lifestyle-linked risk factors: For risk factors, students should focus on understanding those linked to lifestyle choices rather than memorising all of them.
- Theory of Planned Behaviour components: Students should know the Theory of Planned Behaviour and its three components.
- Health behaviour for assignment: The assignment must be anchored around a specific health behaviour.
- Credible sources for assignment facts: Facts and statistics used in the assignment should come from a credible source, such as a peer-reviewed journal or a legitimate website like Stats Canada or Public Health Canada. Canadian statistics are preferred if available.
- Assignment time commitment: The assignment is intended to be fairly quick and fun, ideally taking only one to two hours if done as outlined, not a multi-week project.
- Effective ad campaign components: Ad campaigns, like the examples shown, should contain key components such as good angles, relevant text, potential use of stats, a clear story, and a clear take-home message. The goal is to educate, convince, and change health behaviour.
Core concepts
- Health behaviour: Any behavioural choice that influences one’s health, such as wearing a helmet or opting for cancer screening. These are choices linked to lifestyle that affect health outcomes.
- Stress: A transactional process where an individual perceives a discrepancy between the demands of a situation and their biological, psychological, or social resources. Stress can be measured through physiological arousal, life events surveys, daily hassles, and chronic stressors. Not all stress is necessarily harmful.
- Evolving societal views on health: Historical shifts in understanding health moved from solely treating illness to recognising the importance of preventing health problems and promoting good health. This represents a life cycle approach to health.
- Health psychology: A field focused on understanding psychological influences on how people stay healthy, why they get ill, and how they respond to illness. Health psychologists particularly focus on health promotion and maintenance, differentiating them from practitioners primarily dealing with existing illness. It integrates biological, psychological, and social factors.
- Health as more than absence of illness: Not having a specific disease (like cancer, HIV, or the flu) does not equate to being optimally healthy. Optimal health implies reaching a higher level of well-being.
- Symptom perception: Influenced by actual physiological changes, but also significantly by beliefs, attention to internal states, and competing external stimuli. Cognitive, social, and emotional factors play a role, as seen in phenomena like medical student’s disease or mass psychogenic illness.
- Illness representations/beliefs: People’s ideas about their illness, including its identity (name/symptoms), causes, timeline (prognosis), consequences, and their belief in its controllability. These representations influence how people cope with and manage their health problems.
- Patient-practitioner relationship: The quality of this interaction, including communication, shared decision-making, autonomy, and informed consent, significantly influences patient satisfaction with healthcare. Clear, concrete, and straightforward communication is crucial, particularly for complex or long-term advice.
- Adherence to medical advice: Patient compliance with medical regimens is often a major barrier in healthcare. Adherence tends to be lower for complex, long-term, or preventative treatments compared to treatments for acute illnesses. Patient-practitioner interactions and clear instructions can influence adherence.
- Pain: A subjective experience with multiple dimensions: sensory, affective (emotional-motivational), and evaluative. Pain can be assessed through interviews, rating scales (visual analogue, box, verbal), questionnaires (like the McGill Pain Questionnaire), behavioural observation, and pain diaries.
- Stroke effects: Depending on the location and extent of brain damage, strokes can result in various impairments including motor, sensory, cognitive (language, memory, perception), and speech deficits. Damage to specific hemispheres is linked to particular cognitive deficits (e.g., left hemisphere for language, right for visual imagery and patterns).
- Spinal Cord Injury: Neurological damage to the spine causing loss of motor control, sensation, and reflexes below the injury level. The severity and location of the damage determine the extent of paralysis (tetraplegia from neck damage, paraplegia from lower damage). Permanent damage occurs if the cord is severed, while partial function may recover if it is only compressed or abraded.
Theories and Frameworks
- Biopsychosocial (BPS) model: Posits that health and illness result from the complex interplay of biological, psychological, and social factors. It is considered a more inclusive and holistic approach than the biomedical model. Diagnosis should consider all three factors.
- Biomedical model: Assumes that health and illness are solely determined by biochemical or neurophysiological changes in the body, largely disregarding psychological and social factors.
- Transactional model of stress: Defines stress as a process involving cognitive appraisal of the demands of a situation in relation to available resources.
- Health Belief Model: Proposes that health behaviour is motivated by the perceived threat of an illness (based on perceived susceptibility and seriousness) and the perceived benefits versus barriers of taking action, along with cues to action.
- Theory of Planned Behaviour: States that behaviour is primarily predicted by behavioural intention, which is influenced by one’s attitude toward the behaviour, subjective norms (social pressure), and perceived behavioural control (belief in one’s ability to perform the behaviour).
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) principles: Includes identifying triggers, self-observation/monitoring, challenging and changing negative thought patterns (cognitive restructuring), and developing coping strategies to modify behaviour. It empowers the individual to manage their issues using cognitive power.
- Gate-Control Theory of Pain: Suggests that pain perception is modulated by a “gate” in the spinal cord influenced by nerve signals from the body, descending impulses from the brain, and psychological factors.
- Crisis theory: Explains how individuals cope with health problems starting with a cognitive appraisal of the problem’s meaning, followed by identifying adaptive tasks and applying coping skills, influenced by personal and social factors.
Notable Individuals
- Terry Ahuja: Professor for the course, teaching Introduction to Health Psychology.
- Sullivan: Associated with the idea of a health system and the importance of prevention and promotion in health.
- Lazarus & Folkman: Contributed to the transactional model of stress, defining stress via cognitive appraisal and resource discrepancy.
- Lupien: Developed the DeStress for Success Program for students to recognise stress signs and improve coping.
- Wolfgang Linden & Laura Chambers: Conducted a meta-analysis on the effectiveness of multidimensional stress management programmes for blood pressure.
- Melzack: Known for his work on pain theories (Gate-Control Theory) and assessment tools (McGill Pain Questionnaire).
- Freud: Introduced the concept of conversion hysteria, linking psychological conflict to physical symptoms.
- Descartes: Associated with the mind-body dualism theory.
- Ramon Cajal: Mentioned in relation to the structure of brain cells (cell bodies and dendrites).
- Reynolds: Conducted a rat study supporting the Gate-Control Theory of Pain regarding brain impulses inhibiting pain.
- Turk, Meichenbaum, & Genest: Cited in relation to pain assessment, coping strategies, and distraction techniques for pain management.
- Sarafino: Mentioned in relation to systematic desensitisation and in vivo exposure procedures for reducing fears.
- Aminoff & Kerchner: Cited in relation to effects, diagnosis, and treatment of neurological conditions like stroke, epilepsy, and spinal cord injury.
- Tortora & Derrickson: Cited regarding brain hemisphere functions, particularly in relation to stroke effects.
- Trief: Mentioned in relation to diabetes self-management and monitoring.
- Becker & Maiman: Associated with the Health Belief Model.
- Byrne & Long: Studied physician interaction styles through analysis of medical consultations.
- Hall & Roter: Reviewed communication processes in medical visits and physician questioning styles.