Health Psychology

BY: CHE  
In my psychology class, I learned that mental health does not only affect our mind, but it also affects our physical health. I thought this would be interesting topic to talk about. 

The biopsychosocial model suggests that physical illness is caused by a complex interaction of biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors. This emerging recognition that psychological factors influence physical health made a new specialty in the field of psychology which is health psychology. Health psychology studies how psychosocial factors have relationships with the enhancement and maintenance of physical health and with the causation, prevention, and treatment of illness.

I’d like to talk about one example that health psychology can be used. It explains how personality and illness are related. Health psychologists held a simple research on two different types of people. Person A had three elements of personality; 1. a strong competitive orientation, 2. impatience and time urgency, and 3. anger and hostility. Person B had opposite version of those three elements of personality which were; 1. relaxed, 2. patient and easy going, and 3. amicable behavior. Their result suggested that there is a link between coronary risk and Person A’s personality.

There are a lot more that health psychology has researched and experimented, and those studies can be very helpful to know even just for our daily lives.