Health Psychology

The aspect of psychology which studies relations between physical well-being and illness to psychology is health psychology. One of the main studies connected to health psychology is the study of stress. Stress is described as “pressures or demands placed upon an organism to adjust or adapt to its environment”. Limited amounts of stress in the body can be useful as it helps to provide alertness and energy, but too much stress build up will begin to cause problems. When the body becomes overloaded with stress, psychological (anxiety and depression) and physical health problems may begin to occur. This is known as distress.

Stress stems from various sources including negative as well as positive occurrences. Any source of stress is known as a stressor. A hassle is when something happens in a manner that we dislike. An example of an ordinary hassle would be leaving an important document at home, and having to return home and pick it up. A build-up of these hassles is said to contribute to the general level of chronic stress, persistent tension/pressure which leads to exhaustion, irritability, depression, in our lives. Life events are another type of stressor. A life event is a major change in one’s life for either the better or the worse. It has been shown in prior research that individuals who have experienced many life changes were more prone to become physically ill, although this only a correlation and not evidence. Frustration, a negative type of stressor, generally occurs when events do not turn out as the individual had perceived or wished that they would.

Conflict occurs when there is a decisional pull between two or more options that must be resolved. There are four types of conflict including Approach-Approach, Avoidance-Avoidance, Approach-Avoidance, and Multiple Approach-Avoidance. Approach-Approach conflict generally deals with deciding between two positive, yet important options (for example deciding whether to take a cruise or to tour Paris) and is said to be the least stressful type of conflict. The opposite of Approach-Approach would be Avoidance-Avoidance in which the individual is caught in between the lesser of two evils. This type of conflict can be highly stressful. Approach-Avoidance conflict can be seen in everyday decision making. This type of conflict occurs when an individual weighs the pros and cons of an option, and makes a decision based on those pros and cons. Multiple Approach-Avoidance, the most complex type of conflict, entails multiple goals, each with positive and negative factors. For example, deciding between whether to go to a literally once-in-a-lifetime event with friends, or to stay home and work on the twenty page paper due in two days. In this conflict there are pros and cons to both decisions, but one is more heavily weighted than the other depending on who is in the situation. This type of conflict can also be highly stressful.