Chapter 14

1. Chapter 14 Health and Well-Being

2. Health Psychology • The application of psychology to the promotion of physical health and the prevention and treatment of illness. • But isn’t physical illness a purely biological event?

3. Stress and Health

4. Stress • An unpleasant state of arousal that arises when we perceive that the demands of an event threaten our ability to cope effectively. • Subjective appraisal of the situation determines: • How we will experience the stress • What coping strategies we will use

5. Stress (cont’d) • Appraisal is the process by which people make judgments about the demands of potentially stressful events and their ability to meet those demands. • Coping is an effort to reduce stress.

6. What Americans Cite as Top Stressors

7. The Stress and Coping Process

8. What Causes Stress?

9. Crises and Catastrophes • Stressors: Anything that causes stress. • Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): A person experiences enduring physical and psychological symptoms after an extremely stressful event.

10. Major Life Events • Change itself may cause stress by forcing us to adapt to new circumstances. • Is change, positive or negative, necessarily harmful? • No support that positive “stressors” are as harmful as negative stressors. • Impact of change depends on person and how change is interpreted.

11. Microstressors: The Hasslesof Everyday Life • Most common source of stress arises from the daily hassles that irritate us. • e.g., environmental factors. • “Microstressors” place a constant strain on us. • The accumulation of daily hassles contributes more to illness than do major life events – e.g., job, commuting, paying the bills, etc.

12. How Does Stress Affect the Body?

13. General Adaption Syndrome • Three-stage bodily response to stress • Alarm • Resistance • Exhaustion • Stress may be a short-term reaction to a threat, but over time it compromises health and well-being.

14. The General Adaptation Syndrome

15. What Stress Does to the Heart • Type A Behavior Pattern: Characterized by extremes of competitive striving for achievement, a sense of time urgency, hostility, and aggression. • A risk factor for coronary heart disease (CHD)? • Hostility appears to be the main toxic ingredient in CHD.

16. Why Is Hostility and CHD Linked? • Cardiovascular system becomes overworked. • Hostile people are less health conscious. • Hostile people are physiologically reactive. • In tense social situations, they exhibit more intense cardiovascular reactions. • Psychocardiology is a new field that has emerged from this research that attempts to merge the heart and the mind

17. How “Hostile” Is Your Pattern of Behavior?

18. What Stress Does to the Immune System • Stress compromises the body’s immune system. • Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI): A subfield of psychology that examines the links among psychological factors, the brain and nervous system, and the immune system.

19. Pathways From Stress to Illness

20. Links Between Stress and Illness • Research has shown that stress breaks down a body’s immune system • The longer a stressor persists, the more likely the person is to get sick • Personal characteristics can buffer adverse effects

21. Stress Duration and Illness

22. Process of Appraisal

23. Attributions and Explanatory Styles • Seligman (1975): Depression results from learned helplessness. • Abramson et al. (1989): Depression is a state of hopelessness brought on by the negative self-attributions people make for failure. • Depressive explanatory style

24. Using Attributional Styles to Predict Depression

25. The Human Capacity for Resilience • Individuals exhibit three characteristics: • Commitment • Challenge • Control • Hardiness serves as a buffer against stress. • Perception of control is most important factor.

26. Self-Efficacy • The expectation that our behaviors can produce satisfying outcomes • Self-efficacy: Feelings of competence • A state of mind that varies from one specific task and situation to another • Research has shown the more self-efficacy one has, the more willing to take on a task, persist, and succeed

27. Self-Efficacy: A Matter of Life or Death?

28. Dispositional Optimism • Optimism is a generalized tendency to expect positive outcomes. • How can optimism promote positive health outcomes? • Biological – blood samples show optimists exhibit stronger immune response to stress • Behavioral – explanatory style

29. Hopelessness and the Risk of Death

30. Pollyanna’s Health • Positive thinking cannot guarantee good health. • Victims of illness do not just have a “bad attitude.” • Limits to positive thinking. • Especially if it leads us to see ourselves and events in ways that are not realistic.

31. Ways of Coping with Stress

32. How Americans Manage Stress

33. Ways of Coping with Stress

34. Coping Strategies • Problem-focused coping • Emotion-focused coping • Proactive coping

35. Problem-Focused Coping • In dealing with essential tasks, it is better to confront and control than to avoid. • Why is it not always a beneficial approach? • Can be physiologically taxing • Can lead to development of an over-controlling, stress-inducing Type A pattern of behavior

36. Emotion-Focused Coping • Positive Emotions • Broaden • Build • Shutting down and trying to deny or suppress the unpleasant thoughts and feelings. • Distraction can be an adaptive form of avoidance coping. • Concealing one’s innermost thoughts and feelings can be physiologically taxing.

37. Emotion-Focused Coping: Opening Up • Two aspects to opening up as an emotional means for coping with stress: • One must acknowledge and understand one’s emotional reactions to important events. • One must express those inner feelings to themselves and others. • Why might opening up be helpful? • Cathartic experience? • Helps to gain insight into the problem?

38. Self-Focus: Getting Trappedvs. Getting Out • Self-awareness theory revisited. • A self-perpetuating feedback loop can occur: • Being in a bad mood triggers self-focus. • Self-focus in people with low self-esteem further worsens the mood.

39. Self-Focus: Getting Trappedvs. Getting Out (cont’d) • Gender differences: Women brood and men act out. • Healthier alternatives: Getting absorbed in difficult, demanding, and fully engaging activity • E.g., aerobic exercise, writing, reading, gardening

40. Proactive Coping • The helpful coping resources provided by friends and other people. • Has therapeutic effects on both our psychological and physical health. • Social support and contact related to longevity.

41. Aspinwall and Taylor’s Model of Proactive Coping

42. Social Support • Simple social contact model • How many social contacts does a person have? • Diversity of person’s social network • Intimacy model • Does the person have a close relationship with a significant other? • Perceived availability • Does the person believe that ample support is available when needed?

43. Does Being Popular Always Promote Health?

44. The Religious Connection • Religion provides an important source of social and emotional support for many. • Only 15-20% of the world’s population have no religious affiliation. • Is there a link between religiosity and health? • Research is suggestive that there is, but not yet conclusive

45. Culture and Coping

46. Culture and Coping • Do people in all cultures solve problems and cope in the same ways? • Collectivist vs. Individualist cultures • Implicit social support vs. explicit social support

47. Collectivist Coping Styles

48. Culture and Social Support

49. Treatment and Prevention

50. Treatment: The “Social” Ingredients • All healers provide social support. • All therapies offer a ray of hope. • All therapies communicate and instill positive expectations. • Patients can make meaningful choices about the treatment.