Few words about the Psychology of Health and the Biopsychosocial Model

In Health Psychology, the aim is to be taken into account the whole of the biological, psychological and social factors that affect the health of an individual.

Psychology of Health aims at “the promotion maintenance of health, the prevention and treatment of illness, the identification of etiologic and diagnostic correlates of health, illness, and related dysfunction, and to the analysis and improvement of the health care system and health policy formation.” (Mattarazzo, 1982, pp.4).

The recognition that illness is related to behaviour (Brannon & Feist, 2010) has grew gradually and the first book entitled “Health Psychology”, by Stone and colleagues, was published in 1979 (French, Vedhara, Kaptein & Weinman, 2007), preceded by the increase of the national income and income per head in the western countries of the 20th century, which were directly related to the decrease in mortality rates and the increase in life expectancy (Preston, 1975). The economic growth also brought along the drastic impact of clean water infrastructure on the decrease of communicable diseases (Cutler & Miller, 2004), and from the period of 1970 - 1980 increasingly more clinical research have focused on the prevalence of behaviourally preventable diseases such as the cardiovascular disease, which have now reached dimensions of epidemic.

According to the world health organisation, the health is not defined as the absence of a disease and it includes the psychological and the social well-being.

George Engel developed the biopsychosocial model in an effort to address the whole range of factors that may be involved for better diagnosis and treatment (Armstrong, 1987). Everyone is part of its environment of which levels of organization are hierarchically related and affect each other (Engel, 1980). In health psychology the collection and consideration of information for the psychological and social stance of the individual offers opportunities for tailor-made treatments that address potential barriers for effective treatment or other health-related problems, which the classic biomedical interview could miss (Engel, 1980; Schwartz, 1982). Apostolia Alizioti, B.Sc. (Psychol), M.Sc. (Health Psychol), M.B.A., GBC member of the British Psychological Society.

Everyone is part of its environment of which levels of organization are hierarchically related and affect each other (Engel, 1980).

In practice health psychology has four main directions. The clinical health psychology, which involves more work in the health care settings, the public health psychology, which is more focused on the systematic promotion of health education, the community health psychology which is focused on the education of general population in the smaller community and the critical health psychology, which is more focused on the research of the influence of economics and power distribution on health (Marks, 2002). Apostolia Alizioti, B.Sc. (Psychol), M.Sc. (Health Psychol), M.B.A., GBC member of the British Psychological Society.

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References

Cutler, D & Miller, G. (2004). The role of public health improvements in health advances: the 2oth century United States.  US: National Bureau of Economic Research.  Retrieved from http://www.nber.org/papers/w10511

Day, A. (2002). Theoretical tensions in biopsychosocial medicine. In D.F. Marks, D.F. (Ed.).The health psychology reader(pp. 66-76). UK: Sage Publications.

Engel, G. L., (1980). The clinical application of the biopsychosocial model. The Americal Journal of Psychiatry, 137(5), 535-44.10.1176/ajp.137.5.535

Mattarazzo, J.D. (1982). Behavioral health’s challenge to academic, scientific and professional psychology. American psychologist. 37, 1-14. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Preston, S.H., (1975). The changing relation between mortality and level of economic development.Population Studies 1975, 29(2), 231-48.

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