1. Health Psychology: Stress, Coping, and Well-being

2. OUTLINE Stress and Coping:
-How is health psychology a union between medicine and psychology?
-What is stress, how does it affect us, and how can we best cope with it?
Psychological Aspects of Illness and Well-Being
How do psychological factors affect health-related problems such as coronary heart disease, cancer and smoking?
Promoting Health and Wellness
How do our interactions with physicians affect our health and compliance with medical treatment?
How does a sense of well-being develop?

3. THE FOCUS OF HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY
Biopsychosocial Model

4. Stress: Reacting to Threat and Challenge
Stress: A person’s response to events that are threatening or challenging.
Stressors: produce threats to well-being.
e.g. exam deadline, family problems, relationship issues, terror attacks, etc.
Even positive events may produce stress: planning a party, job interview

5. The Nature of Stressors: My Stress Is Your Pleasure
Stress varies according to individuals.
E.g., Bungee jumping, travelling, driving, watching a scary movie.
For people to consider an event stressful, they must:
Perceive it as threatening or challenging
Lack all the resources to deal with it effectively
Same event may be stressful at some times, and provoke no stress at other times.
e.g. studying well for an exam vs. not having
enough time to study

6. Categorizing Stressors
Occur suddenly and typically affect many people simultaneously
Cataclysmic events
Major life events
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Personal stressors
Daily hassles
Uplifts: Minor positive events
Background stressors

7. Categorizing Stressors
Cataclysmic events: strong stressors that occur suddenly and typically affect many people at once (e.g. natural disasters, terror attacks, plane crashes)
In many cases: no lingering stress.
Natural disasters may produce less stress in the long-term than events that initially are not as devastating.
Reasons:
-natural disasters have a clear resolution – once they are over, people can move on to their future knowing that the worst is behind them.
-Allows people to offer social support to each other
So what kinds of events tend to be seen as stressful? Natural disasters such as earthquakes and tornadoes, plane crashes or terror attacks are examples of cataclysmic events that can affect hundreds or thousands of people simultaneously.

8. Categorizing Stressors
Personal stressors: major life events that have immediate negative consequences that generally fade with time (e.g. death of a family member, relationship break-up, loss of a job, or even getting married).
Typically, personal stressors produce an immediate major reaction that soon tapers off.
e.g. stress arising from the death of a loved one tends to be greatest just after the time of death BUT over time less stress.

9. Categorizing Stressors
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): a phenomenon in which victims of major catastrophes or strong personal stressors feel long-lasting effects that may include re-experiencing the event in vivid flashbacks or dreams.
(e.g. rape victim – innocent man who resembles the rapist)
Soldiers, child abuse or rape, rescue workers, victims of natural disasters or accidents that produce feelings of helplessness and shock.

10. Categorizing Stressors
Background stressors (daily hassles): Everyday annoyances that cause minor irritations and may have long-term ill effects if they continue or are compounded by other stressful events.
e.g. being stuck in traffic, standing in a long line at bank, etc.

11. The High Cost of Stress Both biological and psychological consequences
Psychophysiological disorders: Medical problems influenced by an interaction of psychological, emotional, and physical difficulties
Stress affects us in multiple ways
Increases the risk of illness
Slow recovery from diseases
Reduce ability to cope with stress in future

12. The General Adaptation Syndrome Model: The Course of Stress (Selye, 1947)
Physiological response to stress follows the same set pattern regardless of the cause of stress
Three phases:
Alarm and mobilization
Resistance
Exhaustion

13. Coping with Stress Emotion-focused coping Problem-focused coping
Managing emotions in the face of stress, seeking to change the way one feels about or perceives a problem
Emotion-focused coping
Attempting to modify the stressful problem or source of stress
Problem-focused coping
Use more direct escape routes, such as drug or alcohol use
Least effective
Avoidant Coping

14. Coping with Stress People also use:
Defense mechanisms: Unconscious strategies to reduce anxiety by concealing the source from themselves and others
Emotional insulation: Stops experiencing emotions and thereby remains unaffected and unmoved by both positive and negative experiences

15. Coping with Stress Learned helplessness
Occurs when people conclude that unpleasant or aversive stimuli cannot be controlled
Cease trying to remedy the aversive circumstances even if they actually can exert some influence on the situation
Experience more physical symptoms and depression

16. Coping with Stress Coping styles: The hardy personality
Hardiness : Characteristic associated with a lower rate of stress-related illness
Three components:
Commitment
Challenge
Control
Resilience: Ability to withstand, overcome, and thrive after profound diversity

17. Coping with Stress Social support: Turning to others
Mutual network of caring, interested others
Enables us to experience lower levels of stress and be better able to cope with stress we do undergo

18. MODULE 44: Psychological Aspects of Illness and Well-Being
How do psychological factors affect health-related problems such as coronary heart disease, cancer, and smoking?

19. The As, Bs, and Ds of Coronary Heart Disease
Type A behavior pattern: Cluster of behaviors involving hostility, competitiveness, time urgency, and feeling driven
Type B behavior pattern: Characterized by a patient, cooperative, noncompetitive, and nonaggressive manner
Type D behavior pattern: insecurity, anxiety, and the negative outlook
Risk for repeated heart attacks

20. THE DIRECT & INDIRECT PATHWAYS
The dual process model
The direct pathway (eg stress causes illness)
The indirect pathway (eg. Stress causes smoking which causes illness)
DIRECT PATHWAY
INDIRECT PATHWAY

21. Psychological Aspects of Cancer
Emotional responses of cancer patients to their disease may affect its course
Some psychological therapies have the potential for improving quality of life and even extending the lives of cancer patients

22. Well-Being and Happiness
Subjective well-being: People’s sense of their happiness and satisfaction with their lives
Characteristics of happy people
Have high self-esteem - Positive illusions
Have a firm sense of control
Are optimistic
Men and women are generally made happy by the same sorts of activities – but not always
Like to be around other people

23. Well-Being and Happiness
Money does not buy happiness (Well…)
Despite the ups and downs of life, most people adapt to life by returning to a steady-state level of happiness