Stress and Health

• Behavioral Medicine- interdisciplinary field that integrates behavioral and medical knowledge and applies that knowledge to health and disease
• Health Psychology- subfield of psychology that provides psychology's contribution to behavioral medicine

What is Stress?

• Stress- the process by which we perceive and respond to events, called stressors, that we appraise as threatening or challenging
• General Adaptation Syndrome- Selye's concept of the body's adaptive response to stress as composed of three stages
• Phase 1-Alarm reaction
• Phase 2-Resistance
• Phase 3-Exhaustion

Stressful Life Events

• Catastrophic Events- earthquakes, combat stress, floods
• Life Changes- death of a loved one, divorce, loss of a job, promotion
• Daily Hassles- rush hour traffic, long lines, job stress, burnout
• Perceived Control- loss of control can increase stress hormones

What is Stress? (Part 2)

• Burnout- physical, emotional and mental exhaustion brought on by persistent job-related stress
• Coronary Hear Disease- clogging of the vessels that nourish the heart muscle; leading cause of death in the US

Stress and Coronary Heart Disease

• Type A- Friedman and Rosenman's term for people who are competitive, hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, anger-prone
• Type B- Friedman and Rosenman's term for easygoing, relaxed people

Stress and Disease

• Psychomatic Disease- psychologically caused physical symptoms
• Psychophysiological Illness
• "mind-body" illness
• any stress-related physical illness
• distinct from hypochondriasis- misinterpreting normal physical sensations as symptoms of a disease
• Lymphocytes- two types of white blood cells that are part of the body's immune system
• B lymphocytes form in the bone marrow and release antibodies that fight bacterial infections
• T lymphocytes from the thymus and, among other duties, attack the cancer cells, viruses and foreign substances

Promoting Health

• Aerobic Exercise- sustained exercise that increases heart and lung fitness; may also alleviate depression and anxiety
• Biofeedback- system for electronically recording, amplifying, and feeding back information regarding a subtle physiological state
• Blood pressure
• Muscle tension

Prevention

• 14% of US Gross Domestic Product is spent on health care
• 2/3 of organizations with less than 50 employees have health promoting programs
• health assessments
• fitness training
• smoking cessation
• stress management

Smoking

• Some estimations show smoking kills about 20 loaded jumbo jets per day
• Smoking is a pediatric disease
• Rebellious youth
• Modeling behavior, social rewards
• Targeted ad campaigns
• Why not quit? Nicotine delivery system

How to Quit

• Education
• Eliminate the social reinforcement
• Increase social support for quitting
• Cost
• Tax it to shorten the time between behavior and punishment
• Reduces smoking by 4% for every 10% increase cost
• Nicotine Replacement -Patch and Gum
• Reduce pharmacological addiction
• Then treat psychological addiction

Bibliography

Myers, David G., Psychology Fifth Edition. Worth Publishers, Inc. New York, NY ©1998