Examples of how health psychology can help include. Examples of health psychology · What does health mean. Health psychology looks at how the mind and body are connected in health and illness. Examples of how health psychology can help include interventions when a person is feeling very anxious and has headaches or stomach problems. Health psychology is a specialty area that focuses on how biology, psychology, behavior, and social factors influence health and disease.
Other terms, such as medical psychology and behavioral medicine, are sometimes used interchangeably with the term health psychology. Certification in health psychology is available through the American Board of Professional Psychology, although no additional license is required beyond that necessary for the independent practice of psychology. Health psychology is a field of psychology focused on health promotion, as well as on the prevention and treatment of diseases and ailments. By Kendra Cherry, MSed Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the Everything Psychology Book. We summarize some of the ways in which health psychology has been shown to influence patient-level outcomes in primary care settings and outline how health psychology can affect physical and mental health.
Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, a psychology educator and the author of the book Everything Psychology Book. Therefore, it is difficult to separate the benefits of the psychological component of a larger intervention or prescription of medications, or to compare their effectiveness with more traditional functions of health psychology, such as the improvement of the referral or link between appointments and consultations. A meta-analysis of ten randomized controlled trials on psychological interventions for depression in primary care found advantages compared to regular care, but there were no differences between psychological interventions and antidepressant treatment. Health psychology is an important part of managing the psychological and emotional impact that health and illness can have on life.
An important theme from previous work on health psychology in primary care is that psychological interventions have benefits not only for treating mental health conditions, but also for improving health. The combination of all types of professionals in a single group limits the generalization of the results to health psychology (in about half of the trials, psychologists were used to administer psychological intervention).
