Health Psychology Biopsychosocial Interactions, 10th Edition By Sarafino, Smith
Email: Richard@qwconsultancy.com
CHAPTER 1 AN OVERVIEW OF PSYCHOLOGY AND HEALTH CHAPTER OUTLINE I. What is Health? A. Section Introduction 1. Common definitions of health focus on lack of: a. objective signs of illness - e.g., high blood pressure b. subjective symptoms of illness - e.g., pain or nausea B. An Illness/Wellness Continuum 1. The concepts of health and sickness overlap 2. Antonovsky proposes an illness/wellness continuum with polar ends of death/illness/disability v. optimal wellness a. need to change focus from what makes people sick to what keeps people well 3. Health = the positive state of physical, mental and social well-being that varies over time along a continuum C. Illness Today and in the Past 1. In industrialized nations, people live longer than in past and suffer from different patterns of illnesses 2. Until this century, people in North America died from mainly dietary and infectious diseases a. dietary illnesses: illnesses resulting from malnutrition such as beriberi b. infectious diseases: acute illnesses caused by harmful matter or microorganisms ; main cause of death in most of world today 3. History of diseases in US a. 18th century: epidemics of smallpox, diphtheria, yellow fever, measles and influenza killed thousands, esp. children i. infectious diseases such as malaria and dysentery weakened victims and made them susceptible to other fatal diseases ii. such diseases were introduced to America by European settlers 1) Native Americans died at high rates due to lack of previous exposure and natural immunity; lack of immunity probably due to low degree of genetic variation th b. 19 century: new infectious disease beginning to emerge i. decrease in deaths from infectious diseases by end of 19 th century ii. cause of decline 1) improved personal hygiene
1
2) better nutrition resulting in greater resistance to disease 3) public health innovations 4) increased personal concern about health and following advice of health reformers c. 20th century: death rate due to infectious disease declined and average life expectancy increased i. increase in life expectancy from 48 years to 77 years ii. chronic disease leading cause of health problems and half of all deaths in developed countries 1) definition = degenerative illnesses that develop or persist over long period of time 2) examples = heart disease, cancer, stroke 3) reasons = increase in industrialization increases stress and exposure to harmful chemicals; longer life span places people at higher risk for chronic disease 4. Main causes of death across the life span a. children – accidental injury, cancer, & congenital abnormalities b. adolescents – accidental injury, homicide, suicide II. Viewpoints from History: Physiology, Disease Processes, and the Mind A. Early Cultures 1. Belief that physical and mental illness caused by mystical forces a. speculative evidence - use of trephination to allow spirits to escape B. Ancient Greece and Rome 1. Hippocrates’ humoral theory a. health was due to harmony or balance of four humors whereas illness was the result of an imbalance of bodily fluids b. health recommendations included good diet, avoiding excesses to keeps humors in balance 2. Introduction of the mind/body problem a. Greek philosophers, including Plato, argued that the mind and body are separate entities 3. Influence of Galen a. believed in humoral theory and mind-body split b. innovations attributed to Galen - animal dissections to discover how systems work, localization of illness, and belief that different disease have different effects C. The Middle Ages 1. With collapse of Roman Empire, advancement of knowledge and culture slowed dramatically 2. Impact of the Church on slowing development of medical knowledge a. prohibition on human and animal dissection b. belief that creatures with a soul were set apart from ordinary laws of the universe 3. Illness was believed to be a punishment for sin 2