Health Psych – Module 12

Resources

The Breakdown

Important

Aging Population – The elderly are identified as the largest consumers of health and medical system resources and are most at risk, representing a significant challenge for the future of healthcare. Optimising healthy aging involves extending life expectancy and enhancing the quality of life during those years, with factors like social connectedness, physical activity, healthy eating, prevention of falls, and tobacco control being crucial.
Socioeconomic Status (SES) – This is a powerful determinant of health, acting as a strong risk factor for both early and chronic diseases. Education, income, and social status directly influence access to healthcare, understanding of health, and the ability to make healthy choices. Efforts are being targeted at at-risk groups like the Aboriginal population to improve outcomes.
Targeting Risk with Promotion and Prevention – Early identification of individuals at risk for health issues is vital for enabling behavioural and lifestyle modifications. Prevention initiatives, focusing on a “window of vulnerability” in youth and employing “behavioural immunisation” (early education), are essential to avoid future health problems.
Changes in Health Behaviour – The fundamental goal is to achieve long-term behavioural change. Poor health habits such as smoking, consuming high-cholesterol/high-fat foods, lack of exercise, and rising rates of diabetes and obesity are key areas for improvement. Modifying these behaviours is difficult but necessary for better health outcomes.
Evidence-Based Decisions – Modern healthcare decision-making, from treatment protocols to policy, must be grounded in evidence. This shift moves away from individual doctor experience towards data collected from larger, more diverse populations to ensure effective and informed choices. Organisations now explicitly request evidence to shape health policy.
Cost Limitations of the Healthcare System – The increasing population and prevalence of chronic illnesses are significant drivers of healthcare costs. The current expenditure on healthcare is substantial and unsustainable, highlighting the need for cost-effective strategies, including the potential for health psychology to generate savings by preventing illness and promoting healthier lifestyles.

Core concepts

Overview of Future Challenges: The course concludes by summarising key challenges for the future, including the aging population and the critical need to consider quality of life and care. The lecture serves as a broad introduction to health psychology, touching on many significant areas.
Biopsychosocial Model: This model is presented as a holistic and comprehensive approach to health, unlike the outdated biomedical model. It considers biological, psychological, and social factors that influence an individual’s health, promoting a more complete understanding and treatment.
Healthy Aging: As Canada’s elderly population grows, there is a focus on optimising the aging process to ensure the best possible quality of life. Key factors shaping healthy aging include social connectedness, physical activity, healthy eating, prevention of falls, and tobacco control (or overall drug use awareness).
Future Health Priorities: Key areas for health improvement include addressing poor habits like smoking and consumption of high-cholesterol/high-fat foods, alongside promoting exercise. There is also a significant concern about the rise of conditions such as diabetes and obesity, which are largely lifestyle-related.
Social Marketing for Behavioural Change: Social marketing applies commercial marketing techniques to solve social problems, with the primary objective of inducing behavioural change. Factors like technology, commercial drive (e.g., policy goals vs. corporate profit), social views, and individual behaviour are critical considerations.
Early Identification and Prevention: Identifying individuals at risk early can facilitate behavioural and lifestyle modifications, highlighting the role of health psychologists in preventing the development of risk factors. Prevention initiatives, including “behavioural immunisation” (educating children at a young age), are crucial to instil healthy habits early on.
Health Promotion: A strong emphasis is placed on health promotion due to the economic burden of chronic illnesses. This involves educational programmes for lifestyle modification and fostering long-term behavioural change, ideally starting early in life. Physicians are encouraged to incorporate health promotion into their practice and use their status as “tools for change,” along with complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).
Happiness and Hedonic Adaptation: The psychological component of health includes finding happiness and understanding “hedonic adaptation,” where the satisfaction from immediate gratification (like buying a new item) is fleeting, and happiness returns to a baseline level. True happiness often stems from long-term choices and appreciation of what one has, rather than just acquiring more possessions.
Gender Differences in Health: Gender-specific disorders and differences in lifespan and quality of life are increasingly studied. Women, for instance, tend to live longer but experience lower quality of life and often require long-term care facilities more than men. The definition of “woman” is also diversifying to include various demographics like immigrants, Aboriginal people, those with disabilities, the elderly, and individuals with different sexual preferences.
Future of Canadian Health Services: Key needs include improved access to essential healthcare, enhanced quality of care, and addressing the inequality gap, particularly for Aboriginal populations and those with lower socioeconomic status.
Improving Access to Care: Canada faces persistent shortages of doctors and nurses, exacerbated by the pandemic. Strategies to improve access include easing restrictions on foreign doctors, leveraging telehealth technologies for virtual interactions, and developing interprofessional healthcare teams.
Improving Quality of Care: Focus areas include improving efficiencies in the system, better management of health records (e.g., electronic medical records or EMRs), and embracing both health and non-health technologies. Enhancements are also needed in healthcare delivery to prevent injury and infection.
Chronic Illness and the Future: Chronic illnesses are projected to impact more Canadians, imposing a large economic burden. There’s a growing need for non-drug strategies for pain management and improved adherence to treatment, particularly given the increasing trend of chronic illness in the elderly population.
Impact of Technology on Health: Technology, especially social media and medical innovation, profoundly impacts health psychology and overall health. While medical innovation advances treatment, it also raises ethical, psychosocial, and cost concerns. The pervasive use of social media affects physical activity, diet, and social connectedness, leading to new types of illness and shifting the “P” (psychological) and “S” (social) components of the Biopsychosocial model.
Treatment and Cost Effectiveness: Healthcare decisions are increasingly driven by evidence-based medicine. Policymakers consider the interplay of health psychology, pharmacology, and policy in determining treatment effectiveness and cost-effectiveness, especially with rising population and chronic illness rates.
Personalised Medicine: This is a future approach that individualises treatment based on unique patient characteristics, potentially using genetic screening to identify predispositions to diseases or tailoring medication based on individual brain receptor profiles. Gene editing is also a developing area with the potential to dramatically change disease treatment.