PM206 Health psychology Level 5 Plymouth University

Critical Analysis of Scenario With The Help of Biopsychosocial Model of Health

The biopsychosocial model, in a broader sense, helps in attributing disease outcomes in order to elaborate variable interaction of biological factors such as biomedical and genetics, psychological factors like personality mood and behavior, and social factors which are family-related, socioeconomic, and cultural as well as medal factors (Peters, De Bruin and Crutzen, 2015). The model can help in determining the cause, manifesting it, and ultimately deriving the outcomes related to wellness and disease. Generally, it is the duty of health care professionals to work with people and help them in dealing with psychological and emotional aspects related to illness and health. Increasing adherence to medical treatments, smoking cessation, and weight loss programs can effectively help in dealing with this issue (Maddux, 2016). Prevention and intervention programs are designed to stick to a healthier lifestyle in the form of an increase in intake of nutrition and promote exercise.

There are majorly eight goals of health psychology. These are:

• Understanding contextual and behavioral factors that are directly linked to illness and health.
• Prevention of illness
• Investigation on consecutive effect of disease (Hayes, 2016)
• To provide a critical analysis of various health policies
• To conduct research that can help in the prevention and intervention of health issues
• To improve the communication between doctor and patient
• To improve patients' adherence to medical advice
• To find the treatment that can help in managing pain (Maddux, 2016).

Health psychology helps in addressing issues of population and individual level across four main domains. These are public, clinical, social justice, and community. Clinical health psychology helps in applying scientific knowledge to questions that belong to the spectrum of health care. It generally focuses on the prevention and treatment of health problems. It also helps in analysing behavioral change, an individual may experience due to clinical aspects of health. Community health psychology helps in investigating community factors that contribute to health and well-being. These interventions are generally designed with an aim to combat various diseases and promote physical and mental health. Public health psychology helps in assessing potential cause links between psychosocial factors at the pubic or population level (Gardner, 2015). It is generally promoted through educators, policy formulators, and other related health care providers so that public health can be promoted to riskier groups. In the end, critical health psychology is related to the distribution of power and addressing the impact of power differentials on health behaviors, healthcare systems and other linked wellness policies (Andrews and Bonta, 2014). Its main aim is to prioritize social justice with an objective to promote good health in a universal manner for people of all ages, genders, races, and socio-economic positions. It helps in giving equal access to healthcare to all people.

The case discusses regarding issue of obesity where BMI results reflected that more than 35% of low low-income women population in the United States are obese. Obesity leads to various medical attention that are required to be taken by the individual (McCracken and Vowles, 2014)

Public health can be promoted using this model as the dependence of social and behavioral aspects can be gathered that obese women can have due to their health conditions.

Applying the psychosocial model, working upon the mind, body, and environment; all three factors have a strong influence on the health of an individual. None of the factors in isolation can sufficiently lead to any type of health illness. Hence, there is a deep interrelation between components that can help in reaching a specific health outcome. Hence, it is important in the case of Carl and Arlene to it must be able to understand these factors and health care professionals must enter into understanding the core aspect of disease considering these three factors (Epton and et.al., 2015).

Consideration of Health Psychology And Theories of Health Behaviour Change With Respect to Scenario

The health belief model is considered to be the earliest framework that helps in understanding human behavior. It stated that people tend to take their health-related actions based on six types of factors. These are:

• Perceived susceptibility: The current health condition may affect the individual or one of the features of the biopsychosocial model.

Perceived Severity: When the condition becomes severe enough that can have a negative impact on current health consequences (Tonetti and et.al., 2015).

• Perceived benefits: The actions advised by professionals can help in lowering, lessening, or stopping affected risks and consequences of the condition of the patient.
• The perceived cost of barriers: The corrective and preventive benefits can help in outweighing psychological and physical harm so that appropriate behavior can be initiated.
• Cues of Action: There are internal and external cue that triggers the individual to reach to final act (Mazur, 2016).

Social cognitive theory, out of all health behavior theories, has a direct link to the situation that has been discussed in the case study. It states that there is a direct impact of an individual's observation on adoption that can affect their behavior towards a particular disease. There are basically two models that are directly involved in its overall impact. One is direct modelling where people tend to gain insights from people in society and engage in particular behaviour. It is generally known as vicarious learning (Martin and Pear, 2015). Symbolic modeling is another type of model linked to a social cognitive theory where people are likely to adopt the behavior of others that they identify as it has been able to portray them in media.

The theory has been able to proven to be successful in a variety of health-related behaviors, inclusive of cessation, smoking, development of unhealthy or healthy eating habits, exercising regularly, etc. Specialists have also been able to adopt this model in such a manner in order to reduce or stop unhealthy traits among people and develop and enhance actions that are healthy enough to be adopted. It helps in doing alteration in the behavior in such a manner that it can help the individual lead a healthy lifestyle and promote health and wellness (Head and Noar, 2014). This theory helps in developing dynamic interaction between people and their behavior and influence that has been taken from the environment. In other words, it can be stated that people do not learn new behaviors solely by trying them or through an assessment of success or failure. Rather, the survival of activities has a high dependence on the replication of actions. These learned behaviors can also directly become the attention of one's own personality. Making the environmental factors conducive enough can help in ultimately making certain changes in an environmental setting so that the adoption and abilities of the individual can be altered (Eldredge and et.al., 2016). Campaigning regarding obesity and making people realize that certain physical exercises and healthy eating habits can help them lose extra weight can help in the adoption of good practices. It can help in altering personal and environmental perspectives that are leading the population of the United States towards obesity. Various health promotions led by the government do not aim to maintain the current behavior but to initiate a behavioral change that is impactful for individual health (Rapport, 2014).

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Hence, the preparation of strategies that can help in dealing with the increased obesity will initiate behavioral change among people. Improvement in dietary habits can help in promoting long term nutritional behavior and can help in protecting excessive body weight. Moreover, it will also help in preventing obesity-related disease in the near future among, Carl and Arlene, who are currently facing obesity as per the given case scenario (Kwasnicka White and Sniehotta, 2016).

Identifying And Exploring Possible Interventions

Analysing the case study, it can be stated that, it is important to take intervention actions that can help in the reduction of obesity in the individuals. Two intervention techniques have been chosen that can be adopted by health care professionals so as to cope with the emerging problem of obesity (Kossek and Moen, 2014). These intervention activities are,

Brief Intervention

It is a technique that is used to initiate change in the behavior which is unhealthy and risky as well. Such types of behaviors can be, smoking, alcohol misuse, and lack of exercise habits. It can also be used in case of alcohol misuse as well. It acts as a prevention approach which is typically carried out to increase the role of health (Marris, 2014)

It is generally adopted in the two main ways. First is getting people to think differently about unhealthy dietary and lifestyle practices adopted by them. The other is providing people with the skills that can help in consume unhealthy food in the most healthier manner so that its impact on their bodies is minimal. The most common aspect related to it is a physical screening of the candidate who is obese and requires appropriate interventions. People with raised body weight percentages are required to bring adequate control over their eating habits in such a manner that it can help in overall body weight reduction (Kok and et.al., 2016). Weight management groups can also help in initiating this type of change in people belonging to a particular region as stated in the given case scenario. Motivational interviewing is one of the techniques that is adopted. The success rate of this technique is higher depending on the information provided by the individual who is involved in conducting any type of interview (Wells, Evans, and Cheek, 2016). It becomes important to acknowledge that each individual who is arriving for a counseling session can have a different level of readiness to change their lifestyle. It can include the following scenario:

No perception of obesity being a bane (French, Chisholm and Mc Sharry, 2014).

• Realizing that obesity is a problem and has to be modified.
• Currently active address the ileus of obesity to the maximum extent

Already under maintenance and started opting for interventions that can help them in dealing with obesity (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2014).

Feedback is another important aspect that can be adopted to control obesity under brief intervention. It is generally done when the assessment is complete, people tend to receive personalized feedback from professionals regarding their obesity aspect and other behaviors that are related to it (Wells, Evans, and Cheek, 2016). It can help in identifying that obesity is leading them to some health risks up to what extent. Feedback can also be given based on data collected from another group member prior to the adoption of any kind of intervention program. It depends on the researcher that is what way, he/she wants to collect data, it can be in the form of a questionnaire or face-to-face interview (Bowling, 2014). However, the limitation is, that there is no evidence that the data revealed by the individual is correct or not, and a higher dependence of intervention programs is on feedback only (Smith, Mackie, and Claypool, 2014).

Another aspect of skills training is in the development of the skills in people that can assist them in consuming unhealthy food in a safer manner. Skill training programs can effectively go with motivational interviewing techniques which can simultaneously make the individual regarding its importance. Moderate goals can be considered based on their intensity to adapt to the change that is required to be brought into their lifestyle (Michie and Hardeman, 2015).

Motivational Intervention

Motivational intervention is another kind of intervention that can be adapted to cope with the obesity aspect of Carl and Arlene. Obesity and being overweight the common health issues that can lead to an increase in various health conditions in the patient. Hence, it is required to be controlled with the help of various interventions. One such type of intervention is related to motivation. It has been assessed by the researchers that clinical practices combined with motivation can effectively help in achieving better results in comparison to the one where only clinical practices are adopted by the researcher on obese people(Magidson, Collado-Rodriguez and Lejuez, 2014). The opportunity to reinforce behavioral skills seems to be the key to reducing the regain of weight after it has been diminished. Motivational group interventions can be more effective in comparison to isolated clinical practices generally adopted by healthcare professionals (Pilgrim, 2017). Psychologists must include basic training practices related to motivating the individual for lifestyle change in obese or overweight patients. Training may include counseling and workshops solely having this objective. Role play activity is another method of its adoption. For patients having any type of sensory-related or psychiatric disorder, motivational intervention becomes a challenge to adopt (Gerrig and Wilkes, 2015).

Hence, it can be evidenced that, motivational activity is effective enough that can be adopted by psychologists to promote a healthy lifestyle among individuals. It also helps ensure that clinical treatment that has been given by healthcare professionals is adequately followed and adoption of a healthy lifestyle has been initiated by them in a well-defined manner (Sarafino and Smith, 2014).

However, the main limitation of the adoption of this kind of intervention is that it can be short-lived if the individual himself is not motivated enough to practice the same. Although, continuous sessions, from time to time can help leave a positive impact on its functioning (Parahoo, 2014).  

Critically Examining Contextual, Environmental, And Political Facilitation And Inhibiting Factors That Can Impact Health Behaviours And Sustainability

There are various factors that can have a direct or indirect impact on the health behavior of Carl and Arlene. Some of the factors that can affect health behavior and sustainability of practices are:

Contextual factor: There are certain contextual factors that acts as a barrier to properly opting for obese-related interventions. It depends upon the adoption that has been made by the individual from their surroundings (Pilgrim, 2017). There are higher chances that sometimes the acts are adopted by people in ineffective manner. It depends on people how it has been perceived and understood and then ultimately adapted to their lifestyle. Contextual factors have a higher dependence on ecology and environment that can have an adequate impact on the overall collaboration aspect as well (Glanz, 2015).

Environmental factor: There are certain environmental factors that can affect the functioning of an obese. The majority of the habits are generally adopted through behaviors prevailing in the environment. For instance, if one individual is involved in leading an unhealthy lifestyle and still remaining fit, then the same will also be adopted by the other individuals as well, knowing their body type and immunity aspect. Hence, environmental factors play a major role in preserving the health and well-being of people (London, 2014).

Political facilitation:  Inadequate amounts of health promotion have a great deal of impact on what actually has been perceived by people at a particular location. In such cases, the adoption of a variety of health promotions in the form of different intensity that matches the behavioral acceptance of various individuals can help in dealing with the issue. People who belong to an effective society will be conscious from the beginning regarding health-related campaigns and fewer people staying there will be obese (Merluzzi, Yang, and Conley, 2017).

Other inhibiting factors: Other inhibiting factors that have led to an increase in people who are obese are, leading an unhealthy lifestyle, not being aware of weight loss practices, regaining weight after losing it once, adopting of wrong lifestyle, and not being aware of health risk that is linked to obesity, prevailing socio-economic issues, etc (Watkins and Nolen-Hoeksema, 2014).

CONCLUSION

Based on the above report, it can be concluded that Prevention and intervention programs are designed to stick to a healthy lifestyle in the form of an increase in intake of nutrition and promote exercise. Health psychology helps in addressing issues of population and individual level across four main domains (McCracken and Morley, 2014)(McDaniel, 2014). These are public, clinical, social justice, and community. The case discusses the issue of obesity where BMI results reflected that more than 35% of low-income women population in the United States are obese. Social cognitive theory, out of all health behavior theory has a direct link to the situation that has been discussed in the case study. It states that there is a direct impact of an individual's observation that can affect their behavior toward a particular disease. The two types of interventions that are discussed in the report are brief and motivational interventions (Sallis, Owen, and Fisher, 2015)

REFERENCES

• Sallis, J.F., Owen, N. and Fisher, E., 2015. Ecological models of health behavior. Health behavior: Theory, research, and practice, 5, pp.43-64.
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• Maddux, J.E., 2016. Self-efficacy. In Interpersonal and Intrapersonal Expectancies (pp. 55-60). Routledge.
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• Epton, T., and et.al., 2015. The impact of self-affirmation on health-behavior change: A meta-analysis. Health Psychology, 34(3), p.187.
• Tonetti, M.S. and et.al., 2015. Principles in the prevention of periodontal diseases. Journal of Clinical Periodontology, 42(S16).
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• Eldredge, L.K.B., and et.al., 2016. Planning health promotion programs: an intervention mapping approach. John Wiley & Sons.

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