Chapter 12: Health, Stress, and Coping

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Chapter 12 Health, Stress, and Coping
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Health Psychology

• Health Psychology Uses behavioral principles to
  prevent illness and promote health
• Behavioral Medicine Applies psychology to manage
  medical problems (e.g., asthma and diabetes)
• Lifestyle Diseases Diseases related to
  health-damaging personal habits

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Behavioral Risk Factors

• Behaviors that increase the chances of disease,
  injury, or premature death
• Disease-Prone Personality Personality type
  associated with poor health person tends to be
  chronically depressed, anxious, and hostile

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Ways to Promote Health and Early Prevention

• Refusal Skills Training Program that teaches
  young people how to resist pressures to begin
  smoking
• Can be applied to other drugs and health risks
• Life Skills Training Teaches stress reduction,
  self-protection, decision making, self-control,
  and social skills

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Ways to Promote Health and Early Prevention
(cont.)

• Role Model Person who serves as a positive
  example of good and desirable behavior
• Wellness Positive state of good health and
  well-being

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Figure 12.1
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Stress

• Mental and physical condition that occurs when a
  person must adjust or adapt to the environment
• Includes marital and financial problems
• Eustress Good stress
• Stress Reaction Physical reaction to stress
• Autonomic Nervous System is aroused
• Stressor Condition or event that challenges or
  threatens the person
• Pressure When a person must meet urgent external
  demands or expectations

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Figure 12.2
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Burnout

• Job-related condition (usually in helping
  professions) of physical, mental, and emotional
  exhaustion
• Emotional Exhaustion Feel used up and
  apathetic toward work
• Cynicism Detachment from the job
• Feeling of reduced personal accomplishment

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How to Manage a Threat

• Primary Appraisal Deciding if a situation is
  relevant or irrelevant, positive or threatening
• Secondary Appraisal Assess resources and decide
  how to meet the threat or challenge
• Perceived lack of control is just as threatening
  as an actual lack of control

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Coping With Threats

• Emotion-Focused Coping Trying to control ones
  emotional reactions to the threatening or
  stressful situation
• Problem-Focused Coping Managing or correcting
  the distressing situation
• Traumatic Stresses Extreme events that cause
  psychological injury or intense emotional pain

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Frustration

• Negative emotional state that occurs when people
  are prevented from reaching desired goals
• External Frustration Based on external
  conditions that impede progress toward a goal
• Can be social or non-social
• Personal Frustration Caused by personal
  characteristics that impede progress toward a goal

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Figure 12.3
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Reactions to Frustration

• Aggression Any response made with the intention
  of harming a person, animal, or object
• Displaced Aggression Redirecting aggression to a
  target other than the source of ones frustration
• Scapegoating Blaming a person or group for
  conditions they did not create the scapegoat is
  a habitual target of displaced aggression

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Reactions to Frustration (cont.)

• Escape May mean actually leaving a source of
  frustration (dropping out of school) or
  psychologically escaping (apathy)
• Conflict Stressful condition that occurs when a
  person must choose between contradictory needs,
  desires, motives, or demands

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Types of Conflicts
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Approach-Approach Conflicts

• Having to choose between two desirable or
  positive alternatives (e.g., choosing between a
  new BMW or Mercedes)

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Avoidance-Avoidance Conflicts

• Being forced to choose between two negative or
  undesirable alternatives (e.g., choosing between
  going to the doctor or contracting cancer)
• NOT choosing may be impossible or undesirable

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Approach-Avoidance Conflicts

• Being attracted (drawn to) and repelled by the
  same goal or activity attraction keeps person in
  the situation, but negative aspects can cause
  distress

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Ambivalence

• Mixed positive and negative feelings central
  characteristic of approach-avoidance conflicts

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Figure 12.5
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Multiple Conflicts

• Double Approach-Avoidance Conflicts Each
  alternative has both positive and negative
  qualities
• Vacillation When one is attracted to both
  choices seeing the positives and negatives of
  both choices and going back and forth before
  deciding, if deciding at all!
• Multiple Approach-Avoidance Conflicts When
  several alternatives have positive and negative
  features

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Anxiety

• Feelings of tension, uneasiness, apprehension,
  worry, and vulnerability
• We are motivated to avoid experiencing anxiety
• Similar to fear but based on unclear threat

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Freudian Ego Defense Mechanisms

• Habitual and unconscious (in most cases) mental
  processes designed to reduce anxiety
• Work by avoiding, denying, or distorting sources
  of threat or anxiety
• If used short term, can help us get through
  everyday situations
• If used long term, we may end up not living in
  reality
• Protect idealized self-image so we can live with
  ourselves

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Freudian Ego Defense Mechanisms Some Examples

• Denial Most primitive refusing to accept or
  believe reality usually occurs with death and
  illness
• Repression When painful memories, anxieties, and
  so on are held out of our awareness
• Reaction Formation Impulses are repressed and
  the opposite behavior is exaggerated

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More Freudian Ego Defense Mechanisms

• Projection When ones own feelings,
  shortcomings, or unacceptable traits and impulses
  are seen in others exaggerating negative traits
  in others lowers anxiety
• Rationalization Justifying personal actions by
  giving rational but false reasons for them

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Learned Helplessness (Seligman)

• Acquired (learned) inability to overcome
  obstacles and avoid aversive stimuli learned
  passivity and inactivity to aversive stimuli
• Occurs when events appear to be uncontrollable
• May feel helpless if failure is attributed to
  lasting, general factors

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Figure 12.6
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Depression

• State of feeling despondent defined by feelings
  of powerlessness and hopelessness
• One of the most common mental problems in the
  world
• Childhood depression is dramatically increasing
• Some symptoms Loss of appetite or sex drive,
  decreased activity, sleeping too much

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Mastery Training

• Responses are reinforced that lead to mastery of
  a threat or control over ones environment
• One method to combat learned helplessness and
  depression

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How to Recognize Depression (Beck)

• You have a consistently negative opinion of
  yourself
• You engage in frequent self-criticism and
  self-blame
• You place negative interpretations on events that
  usually would not bother you
• The future looks grim
• You cant handle your responsibilities and feel
  overwhelmed

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Stress and Health

• Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) Rates
  the impact of various life events on the
  likelihood of contracting illness
• Not a foolproof method of rating stress
• Are positive life events (getting married, having
  a child) always stressful?
• People also differ in their reactions to stress
• Microstressors (Hassles) Minor but frequent
  stresses

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Psychosomatic Disorders

• Illness where psychological factors contribute to
  actual illnesses (bodily damage) or to damaging
  changes in bodily functioning
• Hypochondriacs Complain about diseases that
  appear to be imaginary
• Certain kinds of ulcers are not psychosomatic
• Most common complaints respiratory and
  gastrointestinal (e.g., stomach pain and asthma)

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Biofeedback

• Applying informational feedback to bodily control
• Aids voluntary regulation of bodily states such
  as blood pressure, heart rate, and so on
• Helpful but not an instant cure
• May help relieve muscle-tension headaches,
  migraine headaches, and chronic pain

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Figure 12.7
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Cardiac Personalities

• Type A Personality Personality type with
  elevated risk of heart disease characterized by
  time urgency, chronic anger, or hostility
• Anger may be the key factor of this behavior
• Type B Personality All types other than Type As
  unlikely to have a heart attack

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Hardy Personality

• Personality type associated with superior stress
  resistance
• Sense of personal commitment to self and family
• Feel they have control over their lives and their
  work
• See life as a series of challenges, not threats

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General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS Selye)

• Series of bodily reactions to prolonged stress
  occurs in three stages

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Stage One Alarm Reaction

• Body resources are mobilized to cope with added
  stress

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Stage Two Stage of Resistance

• Bodily adjustments to stress stabilize but at a
  high physical cost resistance to other stressors
  is lowered

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Stage Three Stage of Exhaustion

• Bodys resources are drained and stress hormones
  are depleted, possibly resulting in
• Psychosomatic disease
• Loss of health
• Complete collapse

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Immunity

• Immune System Mobilizes bodily defenses like
  white blood cells against invading microbes and
  other diseases
• Psychoneuroimmunology Study of connections among
  behavior, stress, disease, and immune system

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Stress Management

• Use of behavioral strategies to reduce stress and
  improve coping skills
• Progressive Relaxation Produces deep relaxation
  throughout the body by tightening all muscles in
  an area and then relaxing them
• Guided Imagery Visualizing images that are
  calming, relaxing, or beneficial in other ways

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More on Stress Management

• Stress Inoculation Using positive coping
  statements internally to control fear and
  anxiety designed to combat
• Negative Self-Statements Self-critical thoughts
  that increase anxiety and lower performance
• Coping Statements Reassuring, self-enhancing
  statements used to stop self-critical thinking

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Figure 12.9