This presentation discusses health psychology, focusing on stress, coping, and well-being. It defines health psychology as the branch investigating psychological factors related to wellness and illness. It describes stress as the response to threatening or challenging events, and categorizes stressors as cataclysmic events, personal stressors, or background stressors. Coping is defined as efforts to control, reduce, or tolerate stress threats, using problem-focused or emotion-focused strategies. Social support and personality traits like hardiness are also discussed as factors influencing stress responses. The presentation explores relationships between psychological factors and health conditions like cardiovascular disease and cancer.

1. Presentation Topic:
Health Psychology: Stress,
Coping, and Well-Being

2. Health Psychology
• Health psychology
– Branch of psychology that investigates the
psychological factors related to wellness and
illness, including the prevention, diagnosis, and
treatment of medical problems
• Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI)
– Study of the relationship among psychological
factors, the immune system, and the brain

3. Stress and Coping
• Stress
The response to events that threaten or challenge
a person.
Events like: paper or exam deadline, a family
problem or a terrorist attack etc
• Psychophysiological disorders
Medical problems that are influenced by an
interaction of psychological, emotional, and
physical difficulties

4. “Stressors” word is derived from “stress” defines
as “the cause of stress.”
There are three categories of stressors.
 Cataclysmic events
 Personal stressors
 Background stressors
Categorizing Stressors

5. Categorizing Stressors
Cataclysmic events
– Strong stressors that occur suddenly, affecting
many people at once
i.e. plane crashes, terrorist attacks, earthquake etc
 Produce potent, lingering stress
 Involving natural disasters may produce less
stress in long run.

6. • Personal stressors
– major life events that have immediate
consequences that generally fade with time.
i.e. death of a family member, loss of ones job, a
major personal failure etc.
• Even something positive such as marriage.
• Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is most
common in catastrophes of personal stressors.
Categorizing Stressors

7. Categorizing Stressors
• Posttraumatic stress disorder
(PTSD)
– Phenomenon on which victims
of major catastrophes or strong
personal stressors feel long-
lasting effects that may include
re-experiencing the event in
vivid flashbacks or dreams
• 9/11 terrorist attacks

8. Categorizing Stressors
• Background stressors “Daily hassles”
– Everyday annoyances, that cause minor irritations and may
have long-term ill effects if they continue or are
compounded by other stressful events.
i.e. being stuck in traffic, long line at bank etc.
Another type of background stressors is a long term which is
“chronic problem”.
i.e. dissatisfaction from school, being in a unhappy
relationship, etc.
– “Uplifts”
• Minor positive events that make one feel good
More “uplifts”, less psychological problems later.

9. High Cost of Stress
Sometimes stress causes high cost emergency reactions like
heart attack, fluctuation in blood pressure, or feeling electric
shocks in skin etc.
• Psycho physiological disorders
– Psychosomatic disorders
• Medical problems influenced by an interaction of
psychological, emotional, and physical difficulties.
Like high blood pressure ,head aches , common cold etc.
Some how these problems are fake.

10. The General Adaptation Syndrome
• Alarm and mobilization stage
Become aware of the presence of a stressor
• Resistance stage
Preparation to fight the stressor
• Exhaustion stage
Negative consequences of the stress appear

11. Psychoneuroimmunology and Stress
There are three types of
consequences of
stress:
• Direct physiological
effects
• Harmful behaviors
• Indirect health
related behaviors.

12. Coping With Stress
• Coping
– Efforts to control, reduce, or learn to tolerate the threats that
lead to stress
Two strategies of stress with coping:
• Emotion-focused coping
– Managing emotions in the face of stress
• Problem-focused coping
– Attempts to modify the stressful problem or source of stress
Some how both are used but Emotion-focused coping used
frequently.
Other ways to deal with coping with stress which are least
effective are:
• Avoidance
• Defense mechanism.

13. Learned Helplessness
• State in which people conclude that
unpleasant or aversive stimuli cannot be
controlled– a view of the world that becomes
so ingrained that they cease trying to remedy
the aversive circumstances, even if they
actually can exert some influence

14. Coping Styles:
The Hardy Personality
• Hardiness
– Personality characteristic associated with a lower
rate of stress-related illness, consisting of three
components
• Commitment
• Challenge
• Control

15. Social Support
• Mutual network of caring, interested others
• Health and loneliness in college students
– Can be psychologically painful
– Negative effect on the immune system

16. The A’s and B’s of Coronary Heart
Disease
• Type A behavior pattern
– Competitive
– Shows urgency about time
– Aggressive
– Driven quality at work
– Hostile, verbally and
nonverbally
– Highly linked with coronary
heart disease in men
• Type B behavior pattern
– Cooperative
– Noncompetitive
– Nonaggressive
– Not usually hostile

17. Cancer
• Evidence suggests the emotional responses of
cancer patients to their disease may have a
critical effect on its course

18. Smoking
• Heredity factors
• Rite of passage
• Habit forming
• Quitting
–Replacement therapies
–Psychotherapy
–Societal views

19. Promoting health
We are not very good in taking medical advice.
• 85% patients do not fully comply with physician’s
recommendation
• 14-21% don’t fill their drug prescriptions.
• 10% adolescent pregnancies result from compliance
with birth control medicines.
• 60% cannot even identify their own medicines.
• 30-50% ignore instructions or make error in taking
medicines.
In order to minimize the health or psychological
issues, we have to pay attention!

20. Failure to communicate.
• Sometimes doctors and patient completely fail
to communicate with each other.
• They may improve it by identify some tips.
Increasing compliance with advice.
• Positively framed message
• Negatively framed message
Promoting health

21. Well-Being and Happiness
• Subjective well-being
– Person’s evaluations of their life, in terms of both their thoughts
and emotions
• Characteristics
– High self-esteem
– Sense of control
– Optimism
– Sociable
• Does money buy happiness?

22. Questions ?