This document provides an overview of health psychology. It defines health psychology as a field that deals with psychological and behavioral factors that influence health and well-being. The document then discusses the history of health psychology, including early perspectives on health from ancient cultures and the emergence of the biomedical and biopsychosocial models. It also outlines the scope of health psychology, including clinical, public, community, and critical health psychology approaches.

1. HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY
Chapter 1- Historical
Background
Miss Aisha Akhlaq

2. LEARNING OUTCOMES
1. Definition
2. History and Scope of Psychology
3. Perspectives and Models of Health Psychology

3. INTRODUCTION
It is understood now that life style has a
great impact on health and overall
wellbeing of a person. Many of the health
problems related to some serious illnesses
such as cancer, heart disease etc are due
to unhealthy behavior or lifestyle choices
an individual makes (e.g smoking or
overeating).

4. WHAT IS HEALTH?
The perception of Health also has become
changed as health is not just being away from
diseases but it is overall positive well being.
(Brannon & Feist, 2010).

5. WHAT IS HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY?
•Health psychology deals with the psychological
and behavioral processes contributing to overall
individual’s well being and health.
•Health psychology also called as behavioral
medicine. Behavioral medicine is
interdisciplinary field including both medicine
and psychology.

6. •It deals with the subject of health and
illness by merging all knowledge of
biological, behavioral, social and
psychological sciences.
•Health psychology is basically applying
the psychological theory to health related
practices.

7. DEFINITION
• “Health psychology can be defined as the aggregate of
the specific educational, scientific and professional
contributions of the discipline of psychology to the
promotion and maintenance of health, the prevention and
treatment of illness, and the identification of etiologic and
diagnostic correlates of health, illness and related
dysfunction”. (Matarazzo, 1980, p. 815)
•The scientific study of how psychological factors relate to
the promotion and maintenance of health, and causation,
prevention, and treatment of physical illnesses, as well as
how people respond when they do get ill (Taylor, 1999) •
Psychological factors: behaviors, emotions, beliefs,
attitudes, personality, and stress etc Master of Behavioral
Health Health Psychology Module Spring 2005

8. Modification in definition;
as Health psychology
“includes psychology’s contributions to
• the enhancement of health,
• the prevention and treatment of disease,
• the identification of health risk factors,
• improvement of the health care system,
• and the shaping of public opinion with regard to health.” (Brannon
& Feist, 2010, p. 13).

10. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT
• Early cultures believed that
 Mind and body as a unit
 Illness believed to be caused by evil spirits
 Trephination Master of Behavioral Health Health Psychology
Module Spring 2005

11. Ancient Greeks:
• Hippocrates developed the humoral theory of illness; later
elaborated by Galen
• Disease caused by an imbalance of the four humors: blood, black
bile, yellow bile, and phlegm; humoral imbalance also have an impact
on the mind
• Treatment involved restoring balance among the humors
• Mind and body as separate entities
 But Hippocrates did believe that health includes both physical and emotional
aspects Master of Behavioral Health Health Psychology Module Spring 2005

12. Middle Ages:
• Disease seen as God’s punishment for wrongdoing
• Cure consisted of torturing the body to drive out the evil
• The Renaissance and After:
• Mind and body as separate entities to severe the ties between
mysticism and disease – mind-body dualism
• Development of microscopy, autopsy, antiseptic techniques and
anesthesia

13. • Rejection of the humoral theory
• Biomedical Model, for the next 300 years
All disease or physical disorders can be explained by disturbances in physiological
processes resulting from injury, biochemical imbalances, bacterial or viral infection
and the like Master of Behavioral Health Health Psychology Module Spring 2005

14. Emergence of Health Psychology
Challenges to the biomedical model led to the development of:
• Psychosomatic Medicine
• Behavioral Health
• Behavioral Medicine
• Health Psychology Master of Behavioral Health Health Psychology
Module Spring 2005

15. THERE ARE TWO DOMINANT
MODELS IN THE HEALTH
PSYCHOLOGY
•The Biomedical Model - proposes biological problems as causes of
illness and emphasizes illness and its causes over health and its
causes. Mind –body dualism is implied and they are considered
separate systems that don’t influence each other. The allopathic
system is aligned with the biomedical model.
•The Biopsychosocial Model - acknowledges the role of social and
psychological factors and their interaction with biological factors in
influencing health or illness. This model emphasizes health as well as
illness and is more aligned with the health promotion approach. The
interactive relationship of the mind and body is espoused by this
model (Taylor, 1995).

16. HISTORY OF HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY
Two major perspectives ;
One is biomedical tradition- a reductionist approach,
claimed that disease is solely because of biological
factors.
Early attempts were not refined enough, for example
discovery of the benefits of acupuncture, Hippocrates
humoral theory of disease and treatment.

17. • Later, scientist developed the germ theory (diseases caused
by microorganisms, proposed in the mid-16 century) by
focusing on the structure and genes to define and understand
illness and disease.
• Limitation of this approach was that this tradition is full with
somatic correlates.

18. SECOND PERSPECTIVE
• the psychosocial perspective; this perspective
focused on the psychological and social factors
of illness. 1940’s this wide phenomenon
merged into one field called “psychosomatic
medicine”.

19. • Psychosomatic medicine phenomenon is based on
assumption that psychological factors can be the
cause of some diseases.
• Alexander, 1950 singled out some psychosomatic
diseases such as peptic ulcers, essential hypertension
and bronchial asthma. (Alexander, 1950 as cited in
Trull, & Prinstein, 2012) .

20. • By the 1960’s there was a change in
perspective as the research line demonstrated
that how personality and behaviors cause the
disease. For example smoking and overeating
correlate to some major diseases.
• During 1960’s due to increase in stressful
events it was implicated that stressful life
events are the risk factors for illness.

21. WHAT DO HEALTH
PSYCHOLOGISTS DO?
• Research
• Practice
• Individual and community levels
• Prevention of physical illnesses and health promotion; treatment of
and adjustment to physical illnesses Master of Behavioral Health
Health Psychology Module Spring 2005

22. THE SCOPE OF HEALTH
PSYCHOLOGY(MARKS ET AL,2008)
Although health psychology developed relatively recently as a formal
sub discipline, there are four sub areas into which it could be
categorized on the basis of scale or unit of analyses.
•Clinical Health Psychology is focused on the individual whereas public
and community health psychology focus on larger groups and critical
health psychology focuses on macro structural factors. Clinical Health
Psychology – Seeks to understand health outcomes and the quality of
life from a psychological perspective. An example of the work in this
area would be understanding the impact of stress on blood pressure
or developing an intervention for smoking cessation and running
randomized controlled trials. It is the most well established of the
four approaches and the most rigorous in terms of methodology.

23. •Public Health Psychology - Is concerned with the general population
especially vulnerable groups and health policy and how it gets
translated and its impact on health outcomes – evaluates its impact. It
is multidisciplinary and draws from epidemiology as well as
psychology. The typical methods are large scale surveys. Community
•Health Psychology – The focus is on social change and the research
methods are participative research and action research. The link
between the community and individuals is emphasized and the aim is
to improve or develop the community.
•Critical Health Psychology – Is concerned with larger influences such
as power, economics and social institutions on health and health
care. It aims to analyze the assumptions and discourse in the field of
health of researchers and health professionals and policy makers.