Health psychology is the branch of psychology that studies how psychological, behavioral and social factors influence physical health, illness and healthcare, using a biopsychosocial model that treats health as the joint product of biological, psychological and social processes rather than biology alone.
Facts
Disputed
Key DebateWhether mainstream health psychology's focus on individual-level psychological and behavioral factors adequately explains health outcomes, or whether it understates the social determinants of health. Critical health psychologists, working with qualitative methods that center the lived health experience, have critiqued and deconstructed what they see as an excessive individualism in the field's dominant biopsychosocial approach. 1 A named minority tradition within the field (critical health psychology) disputes the individual-level emphasis of the mainstream approach; the source does not resolve which framing better predicts outcomes. Central QuestionHow do psychological, behavioral and social factors influence physical health, illness and the healthcare system? 1 Connections
Associated With
Closely overlapping subfields, both studying the psychological factors in physical health and illness.
Occupational health psychology applies health psychology's framework specifically to workplace settings.
Includes
Source Wikipedia: General Adaptation Syndrome
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Health Psychology
Wikimedia FoundationLead section
The study of psychological and behavioral processes in health, illness, and healthcare.
United Kingdom section
Psychologists have been working in medical settings for many years (in the UK sometimes the field was termed medical psychology).
Critical analysis of health policy section
The individualism of mainstream health psychology has been critiqued and deconstructed by critical health psychologists using qualitative methods that zero in on the health experience.
Wikipedia: General Adaptation Syndrome
Wikimedia FoundationIncludes: Hans Selye, Origin of stress term sectionQuote, Includes: Hans Selye, Origin of stress term section
The current usage of the word stress arose out of Hans Selye's 1930s experiments.
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Key Debate
Marks (2011) argues mainstream health psychology's biopsychosocial model still centers the individual as the unit of explanation and intervention, and that this individualism understates the social and economic determinants of health, the conditions within and between regions and nations that shape illness independent of any one person's behavior or psychology. Critical health psychology, working with qualitative methods that foreground the lived health experience, positions itself as a corrective to that individualist framing rather than a rejection of the biopsychosocial model outright.
A dissenting reading, from D.F. MarksWikipedia: Health Psychology, Wikimedia Foundation
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