Health & well-being

1. Health & well-being Unit 8

2. Can Psychosocial Factors Affect Health? • Discuss the goals of Health Psychology. • Describe the biopsychosocial model of health. • Identify behaviors that contribute to the leading causes of death in industrialized societies. • Describe the placebo effect.

3. Can Psychosocial Factors Affect Health? • Our behaviors and attitudes are critical in keeping us healthy, helping us regain health following illness, and helping us achieve well-being • health psychology:an area of study that integrates research on health and on psychology to promote health and well-being • well-being:a positive state that includes striving for optimal health and life satisfaction • Health psychology is interdisciplinary

4. The Biopsychosocial Model of Health Incorporates Multiple Perspectives for Understanding and Improving Health • How can a person’s personality or thoughts or behaviors affect his or her health? • Biopsychosocial model:a model of health that integrates the effects of biological, behavioral, and social factors on health and illness • Contrasts with the traditional medical model that views the individual as passive recipient of both disease and treatment

6. Behavior Contributes to the Leading Causes of Death • People are most likely to die from causes that stem from their own behaviors, which they can learn to modify (U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, 2010) • Leading causes of death in the United States in 2007 were: • Heart disease • Accidents • Teenagers/young adults: of all deaths, 48 percent are due to accidents, 13 percent to homicide, and 11 percent to suicide

7. Placebos Can Be Powerful Medicine • Placebo effect: improvement in health attributed to an inert drug or bogus treatment. Participants must believe it will work and not know that the pills are chemically inert • Placebos can reduce pain perception when people believe they will (Wager, 2005). • Neural processes involved in responding to a pain-reducing placebo are similar to the ones activated in response to a biologically active treatment (Benedetti, Mayberg, Wagner, Stohler, & Zubieta, 2005) • Drugs that interfere with the body’s natural method of reducing pain also make pain relievers and placebos equally ineffective (Amanzio & Benedetti, 1999)

8. How Do We Cope With Stress? • Define stress. • Discuss sex differences in responses to stressors. • Describe the general adaptation syndrome. • Discuss the association between personality traits and health. • Define hardiness.

9. How Do We Cope With Stress? • Stress:a pattern of behavioral, psychological, and physiological responses to events that match or exceed an organism’s ability to respond in a healthy way • Stressor:an environmental event or stimulus that threatens an organism • Coping response:response an organism makes to avoid, escape from, or minimize an aversive stimulus • eustress: stress of positive events • distress (duress): stress of negative events • Psychologists typically think of stressors as falling into two categories: Major life stressors and daily hassles

12. There Are Sex Differences in How We Respond to Stressors • Cannon’s fight-or-flight response • Increased heart rate, redistribution of blood to muscles and brain, deepening of respiration, dilation of the pupils, inhibition of gastric secretions, and increase in glucose released from the liver • Researchers have avoided using women in their studies • Women and men often respond differently to stressors • Tend-and-befriend response • It is possible that the release of oxytocin during social stress encourages women to affiliate with or befriend others (Taylor, Saphire-Bernstein, & Seeman, 2010)

15. The General Adaptation Syndrome is a Bodily Response to Stress • General adaptation syndrome:a consistent pattern of responses to stress that consists of three stages: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion • Alarm stage:prepares the body to fight or flee • Resistance: The defenses prepare for a longer, sustained attack against the stressor • Exhaustion:A variety of physiological and immune systems fail

17. The Immune System • Stress alters the functions of the immune system • Psychoneuroimmunology:field in which the response of the body’s immune system to psychological variables is studied • Short-term stress boosts the immune system; chronic stress weakens it • Healthy volunteers had cold viruses swabbed into their noses. Those who reported the highest levels of stress prior to exposure developed worse cold symptoms than those who reported being less stressed (Cohen et al., 1991).

19. Stress Affects Health • Over the long term stress hormones negatively affect health • Chronic stress, especially psychosocial stress, is associated with the initiation and progression of a wide variety of diseases, from cancer to AIDS to cardiac disease • Many people cope with stress by engaging in damaging behaviors (e.g., smoke, drink alcohol, use drugs, eat junk food)

20. Can a Positive Attitude Keep Us Healthy? • Discuss the goals of positive psychology. • Describe the health benefits of positive affect, social support, marriage, trust, and spirituality.

21. Positive Psychology Emphasizes Well-Being • Positive psychology: emphasizes the strengths and virtues that help people thrive. Its primary aim is an understanding of psychological well-being • Scientific study of faith, values, creativity, courage, hope, happiness • Example: • According to positive psychologists, happiness has three components: positive emotion and pleasure, engagement in life, a meaningful life (Seligman, Steen, Park, & Peterson, 2005) • Broaden-and-build theory:Positive emotions prompt people to consider novel solutions to their problems (Fredrickson, 2001)

22. Being Positive Has Health Benefits • Across multiple studies and types of measures, positive emotions are related to considerable health benefits: • Higher levels of hope and curiosity are associated with reduced risk of disease (Richman et al., 2005) • A positive affect, or being generally positive, has multiple beneficial effects on the immune system (Marsland, Pressman, & Cohen, 2007)

24. Social Support is Associated with Good Health • Social interaction is beneficial for physical and mental health • Ill people who are socially isolated are likely to die sooner than ill people who are well-connected to others (House, Landis, & Umberson, 1988) • Men with fewer friends were 2.3 times more likely to die than comparable men with more friends • Social support (tangible, emotional) reduces overall stress • Buffering hypothesis: Emotional support helps recipients cope with stressful events (Cohen & Wills, 1985)

25. Marriage Can Be Good for Your Health • Positive relationships are good for health • Marriage is associated with health benefits; being single leads to greater mortality for both women and men • However, research shows that people in troubled marriages and people going through a divorce or bereavement have compromised immune systems (Kiecolt-Glaser & Glaser, 1988)

27. Trusting Others is Associated with Better Health • Trust is associated with better health and a longer life: • 160,000 people from every state in the United States responded to the question Most people can’t be trusted. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? • In each state, as the percentage of respondents who believed most people cannot be trusted increased, so did the percentage who reported that their health was fair to poor (Kawachi, Kennedy, & Glass, 1999) • The hormone oxytocin appears to increase trust

29. Spirituality Contributes to Well-Being • Studies how that people who are religious report greater feelings of well-being than do people who are not religious • Religious beliefs serve as a buffer against stress • People achieve and maintain well-being through the social and physical support provided by faith communities • May not engage in unhealthy behaviors (drinking, smoking, eating certain foods) • Benefits may come from a sense of spirituality (our lives are “something more than just a momentary blip in the universe”)

31. Action Plan for Health and Well-Being • To be healthy, people need to cope with stress, regulate their emotions, and control their daily habits.

32. Taking Care of Mind and Body • The following strategies will enhance your health and well-being: • Eat natural foods • Watch portion size • Drink alcohol in moderation, if at all • Keep active • Do not smoke • Practice safe sex • Learn to relax • Learn to cope • Build a strong support network • Consider your spiritual life • Try some of the happiness exercises