Chapter 3 - Health Behaviors PDF

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Summary

Health Psychology with professor MacIntyre,...

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Health Behaviors ● Health promotion ○ Good health is a personal and collective achievement Person

Develops good health habits

Medical practitioner

Teaches person how to engage in healthy behavior and monitors those at risk

Health psychologist

Develops interventions to help people practice health behavior

Community and policy makers

Emphasize good health habits and provide info and resources

● Goals of promotion: Reduce # of deaths, people live more enjoyable lives for more years, increase life expectancy, reduce financial cost of illnesses ● Health behaviors Vs. health habits Health behavior

Vs. health habit

Behaviors people use to maintain or enhance health

Behavior that is firmly established in a person's lifestyle Performed automatically

Good health habits: getting enough sleep, taking vitamins, exercise, washing hands, brush teeth, wearing seatbelt ● Alameda california study (retrospective design) ○ 7000 residents surveyed on 7 different health habits ■ 1. Sleeping 7-8 hours a night ■ 2. Not smoking ■ 3. Eating breakfast everyday ■ 4. Having no more than 1-2 alcoholic drinks a day ■ 5. Getting regular exercise ■ 6. Not eating between meals ■ 7. Being no more than 10% overweight ○ Asked their medical history, days of missed work, energy level over last 6-12 months ○ More health habits = less illness, felt better, less sick days ○ Follow ups conducted 9-12 years later (longitudinal design) ○ Mortality rates were lower for people doing the 7 health habits ● Primary prevention (1st step in preventing illness)

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○ Instilling good health habits and changing bad ones ○ Trying to prevent an illness from occurring (2 ways) ■ 1. Get people to change behavior (most common) ■ 2. Keep people from developing bad habits (more recent) Who practices good health behaviors? ○ Demographic factors- younger, more affluent, better educated, low stress, hgh social support ○ Age- fluctuate: good in childhood, decline in adolescence, improve in older people ○ Values- cultural beliefs ○ Greater personal control- belief health is under their control, better health habits ■ Questionnaire example ○ Social influences- people around us influence is for better or worse ○ Personal goals- example: goals to increase strength or endurance ○ Access to healthcare and perceived symptoms- routine tests, education, motivation to change ○ Cognitive factors- people with knowledge and intelligence have better health Health locus of control ○ Assess whether you think you control your health and whether you believe it's controlled by healthcare professionals or by chance Barriers to modifying poor health behaviors ○ Inconvenient, expensive healthy foods, education on foods ○ Few immediate benefits to health behaviors ○ Emotions lead to the development and maintenance of behaviors ○ Health behaviors are independent and unstable ■ Different habits are controlled by different factors ● Major life events ■ Different factors may contribute to the same behaviors in different people ■ Factors controlling behavior may change over time and the person's life time Importance of intervening when younger ○ Children often start out with good health behaviors ■ Risky behaviors (experiment) teenage years ● Lead to adult behaviors

○ Change behaviors as adults? ● Why intervene with those at risk? ○ Prevent or eliminate poor health habits ■ Example: if at risk for lung cancer, help young adults stop/cut down on smoking benefits

problems

Health promotion funds

Perceived risk

Other risk factors

Social norms

Prevent disease

stress/worry

● Health promotion and older adults ○ Essential for better quality of life and for lower health care spending ■ Exercise, Control alcohol use, Medication, Vaccinations, Addressing depression ● Changing health behaviors ○ Attitude changes ■ Educational appeal: can persuade people to change health behavior with the right info ■ Fear appeal: can persuade people to change if they are fearful that a habit will hurt their health ○ Positive vs. negative message framing ■ Benefits of getting flu vaccination or discomfort of getting the flu ○ Eliciting too much fear can backfire ■ View the problem as less serious or more common ○ Fear alone might not be sufficient to change behavior ■ Combine behavior changes ● Health belief model ○ Attitude theory of why people practice health behaviors ○ Change a health behavior depends on: ■ 1. Perceives a personal health threat ■ 2. Believes that a particular health practice will reduce the threat ● Self efficacy ○ Belief that one is able to control one's practice of a particular behavior

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■ Example: smokers who believe they cannot quit smoking have low self efficacy Theory of planned behavior ○ Links health attitudes directly to behavior ■ Health behaviors are a result of behavioral intention ■ 3 components ● 1. Attitudes ○ Outcomes of the action ○ Evaluations of those outcomes ● 2. Subjective norms ○ What others think the person should do ○ Motivation to comply ● 3. Perceived behavioral control ○ Perception of ability (self efficacy) Self determination theory ○ 2 components of behavior change: ■ 1. Autonomous motivation (free will and choice) ■ 2. Perceived competence (self efficacy) Cognitive - behavioral approaches ○ Cognitive - behavior therapy (CBT) ■ Focuses on the target behavior, conditions that elicit and maintain it, and the factors that reinforce it ■ emotions, feelings, behaviors all influence what you do and how you feel ■ Advantages ● Plan can be tailored to individual problem ● Can deal with multiple health behaviors (diet and exercise) at the same time ● With Individual therapy, group setting, or an online setting Self - monitoring ○ Stages of self monitoring ■ 1. Identify target behavior ■ 2. Track behavior/feelings associated with behavior ○ Person must understand the dimensions of the target behavior before change can begin ■ Frequency of target behavior

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■ Antecedents of behavior ■ consequences of the behavior ○ Example: drinking alcohol ■ Frequency: number of days per week you drink ■ Antecedents: what predicts how much you drink? Stress? Type of friends you're with? ■ Consequences: what happens when you drink? Hangover? Money problems? Nausea? Stimulus control ○ Rid environment of the stimuli ○ Adding positive stimuli around house Classical conditioning ○ Learning to elicit an involuntary, reflex like, response to a stimulus other than the original, natural stimulus that normally produces the response ○ We (unconsciously) associate events with each other ■ A couch with wanting to snack because you usually snack while on the couch ○ Ivan Pavlov ■ Dog example of a dog salivating when they see food Operant conditioning ○ When a person performs a behavior, the behavior is followed by positive reinforcement, the behavior is more likely to occur again ■ Drinking to cope ○ The more strongly a behavior is reinforced, the harder it is to change the behavior Modeling ○ Learning that occurs by observing another person performing a behavior ■ Like the article earlier ○ Can elicit positive or negative health habits ■ If you see your friends donate blood, you're more likely to do so as well ○ Principle of similarity ■ People are more likely to model the behavior if they are similar to the person engaging in the behavior Self control

○ Individual is their own therapist ○ Self reinforcement- rewarding yourself to increase or decrease the occurrence of a target behavior ■ Positive = added negative = removed ■ Positive and negative self reward ■ Positive and negative self punishment ○ Contingency contracting- contract with another person detailing rewards/punishments ○ Behavioral assignments- home practice assignments that support therapy goals ● Relaxation training ○ Poor health behaviors caused or maintained by stress ○ Relaxation training includes ■ Deep breathing ■ Muscle relaxation ○ Mediation ○ Mindfulness ■ Being aware and in the present moment ■ Accept and acknowledge rather than becoming stressed ● Motivational interviewing ○ Interventionist ■ Non judgemental ■ Encouraging ■ Supportive ○ Client centered ○ Ambivalence

● Relapse ○ After successfully changing a behavior, some people relapse to their previous behavior (smoking) ○ Why do people relapse? ○ Prevent relapse ● Transtheoretical model of behavior change ○ 1. Precontemplation ■ No desire for change; unaware ○ 2. Contemplation

■ Acknowledge; no action ○ 3. Preparation ■ Committed to behavior change ○ 4. Action ■ Making changed ○ 5. Maintenance ■ Work to maintain change/prevent relapse ● Social engineering ○ Modifying the environment to affect people's ability to practice a particular health behavior ■ Lowering speed limit, vaccines ○ Not something the individual does but that the environment changes for individuals...