Introduction

In the book "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers" (some of which you will read later in the semester), Sapolsky discusses what we tend to think about when we are lying awake at night, unable to sleep, due to a stressful activity planned for the following day. As the night wears on, our thoughts turn to bodily sensations, such as headaches, and we begin to imagine the worst regarding our health. He goes on to say that:

"Even though I don't know you, I feel confident in predicting that you don't lie there thinking, 'I just know it; I have leprosy.' True? You are exceedingly unlikely to obsess about getting a serious case of dysentery if it starts pouring. And few of us lie there feeling convinced that our bodies are teeming with intestinal parasites or liver flukes.

Thanks to revolutionary advances in medicine and public health, our patterns of diseases have changed, and we are no longer kept awake at night worrying about infectious diseases (except, of course, AIDS or tuberculosis) or diseases of poor nutrition or hygiene.

The diseases that plague us now are ones of slow accumulation of damage – heart disease, cancer, cerebrovascular disorders. Along with this relatively recent shift in patterns of disease have come changes in the way we perceive the disease process. We have come to recognize the vastly complex intertwining of our biology and our emotions, the endless ways in which our personalities, feelings, and thoughts both reflect and influence the events in our bodies."

Sapolsky's goal with this passage is to illustrate how stress can affect our health. However, this excerpt also provides an explanation for the new field of health psychology. When you add behaviors and social processes to his list of health influences, you can see why psychologists have become involved in the health field.

The first lesson will introduce you to the field of health psychology – what it is, how it developed, and why it is needed.

Objectives

At the end of this lesson, students will be able to…

recognize the definition of health used by health psychologists;
describe what health psychologists do;
explain how and why the mind-body relationship has changed over time;
explain the contribution of epidemiology to health psychology;
identify basic research designs used in health psychology; and
differentiate the biopsychosocial model of health and illness from the biomedical model and be able to apply them.

To Get You Started…

Take the Health Knowledge Quiz under the Lesson 1 Activities folder to find out what you already know about health psychology.