1. Health, Stress, and Coping
Chapter 15
Health, Stress, and Coping

2. Health Psychology and Behavioral Risk Factors
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

3. Health Psychology and Behavioral Risk Factors (cont.)
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, hostile, and frequently ill

4. Ways to Promote Health and Early Prevention
Refusal Skills Training: Program that teaches young people how to resist pressures to begin smoking
Life Skills Training: Teaches stress reduction, self-protection, decision making, self-control, and social skills
Role Model: Person who serves as a positive example of good and desirable behavior
Wellness: Positive state of good health and well-being

5. Fig The nine leading causes of death in the United States are shown in this graph. As you can see, eight of the top nine causes are directly related to behavioral risk factors (infection is the exception). At least 45 percent of all deaths can be traced to unhealthful behavior. Although suicide is not shown here, it is the seventh most common cause of death. On this graph, suicides are included in the categories: death by toxic agents, firearms, motor vehicles, and drugs. (Data from McGinnis & Foege, 1993.)

6. Table 15.2 – Major health-promoting behaviors

7. Stress
Mental and physical condition that occurs when a person must adjust or adapt to the environment
Includes marital and financial problems
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

8. Fig. 15.2. Stress is the product of an interchange between a person and the environment.

9. CNN - Shrinking Brains

10. Burnout
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

11. Appraising Stressors
Threat: Event or situation perceived as potentially harmful
Primary Appraisal: Deciding if a situation is relevant or irrelevant, positive or threatening
Secondary Appraisal: Assess resources and decide how to cope with a threat or challenge
Perceived lack of control is just as threatening as an actual lack of control

12. Threats and Frustration
Problem-Focused Coping: Managing or altering the distressing situation
Emotion-Focused Coping: Trying to control one’s emotional reactions to the situation
Frustration: Negative emotional state that occurs when one is prevented from reaching desired goals
External Frustration: Based on external conditions that impede progress toward a goal
Personal Frustration: Caused by personal characteristics that impede progress toward a goal

13. 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 one’s frustration
Scapegoating: Blaming a person or group for conditions they did not create; the scapegoat is a habitual target of displaced aggression

14. 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

15. Fig. 15.3 Frustration and common reactions to it.

16. Conflicts
Approach-Approach Conflicts: Having to choose between two desirable or positive alternatives (e.g., choosing between a new BMW or Mercedes)
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

17. Fig. 15. 4 Three basic forms of conflict
Fig Three basic forms of conflict. For this woman, choosing between pie and ice cream is a minor approach-approach conflict; deciding whether to take a job that will require weekend work is an approach-avoidance conflict; and choosing between paying higher rent and moving is an avoidance-avoidance conflict.

18. Fig Conflict diagrams. As shown by the colored areas in the graphs, desires to approach and to avoid increase near a goal. The effects of these tendencies are depicted below each graph. The “behavior” of the ball in each example illustrates the nature of the conflict above it. An approach conflict (left) is easily decided. Moving toward one goal will increase its attraction (graph) and will lead to a rapid resolution. (If the ball moves in either direction, it will go all the way to one of the goals.) In an avoidance conflict (center), tendencies to avoid are deadlocked, resulting in inaction. In an approach-avoidance conflict (right), approach proceeds to the point where desires to approach and avoid cancel each other. Again, these tendencies are depicted (below) by the action of the ball. (Graphs after Miller, 1944.)

19. Conflicts (cont.)
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
Ambivalence: Mixed positive and negative feelings; central characteristic of approach-avoidance conflicts

20. 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

21. Anxiety
Feelings of tension, uneasiness, apprehension, worry, and vulnerability
We are motivated to avoid experiencing anxiety

22. Freudian Defense Mechanisms; Psychological Defenders of You!
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
Most operate unconsciously
Protect idealized self-image so we can live with ourselves

23. Freudian 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 unconsciously held out of our awareness
Reaction Formation: Impulses are repressed and the opposite behavior is exaggerated

24. More Freudian Defense Mechanisms
Projection: When one’s 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

25. Learned Helplessness (Seligman)
Acquired (learned) inability to overcome obstacles and avoid aversive stimuli; learned passivity
Occurs when events appear to be uncontrollable
May feel helpless if failure is attributed to lasting, general factors

26. Fig In the normal course of escape and avoidance learning, a light dims shortly before the floor is electrified (a). Since the light does not yet have meaning for the dog, the dog receives a shock (non-injurious, by the way) and leaps the barrier (b). Dogs soon learn to watch for the dimming of the light (c) and to jump before receiving a shock (d). Dogs made to feel “helpless” rarely even learn to escape shock, much less to avoid it.

27. 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

28. Mastery Training
Mastery Training: Responses are reinforced that lead to mastery of a threat or control over one’s environment
One method to combat learned helplessness and depression

29. 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 can’t handle your responsibilities and feel overwhelmed

30. CNN – Elderly Depression

31. 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

32. Psychosomatic Disorders
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

33. Biofeedback Applying informational feedback to bodily control
Aids voluntary regulation of activities 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

34. Fig In biofeedback training, bodily processes are monitored and processed electronically. A signal is then routed back to the patient through headphones, signal lights, or other means. This information helps the patient alter bodily activities not normally under voluntary control.

35. Cardiac Personalities
Type A Personality: Personality type with elevated risk of heart attack; characterized by time urgency and chronic anger or hostility
Anger may be the key factor of this behavior
Type B Personality: All types other than Type A’s; unlikely to have a heart attack

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

37. General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS; Selye)
Series of bodily reactions to prolonged stress; occurs in three stages
Alarm Reaction: Body resources are mobilized to cope with added stress
Stage of Resistance: Body adjusts to stress but at a high physical cost; resistance to other stressors is lowered
Stage of Exhaustion: Body’s resources are drained and stress hormones are depleted, possibly resulting in psychosomatic disease, loss of health, or complete collapse

38. Immunity (Similar to “Survivor”?)
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

39. 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

40. CNN – Road Rage

41. Avoiding Upsetting Thoughts
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 negative self-statements

42. Meditation
Mental exercise designed to focus attention and interrupt flow of thoughts, worries, and analyses
Concentrative Meditation: Attention is paid to a single focal point (i.e., object, thought, etc.)
Produces relaxation response and thus works to reduce stress
Receptive Meditation: Based on widening attention span to become aware of everything experienced at a given moment

43. Meditation (cont.)
Mantra: Word(s) or sound(s) repeated silently during concentrative meditation
Relaxation Response: Occurs at time of relaxation; innate physiological response that opposes fight or flight responses