Health Psychology
The subarea within psychology devoted to understanding psychological influences on health, illness, and responses to those states, as well as the psychological origins and impacts of health policy and health interventions
Health
The absence of disease or infirmity, coupled with a complete state of physical, mental, and social well-being; health psychologists recognize health to be a state that is actively achieved rather than the mere absence of illness
Wellness
An optimum state of health achieves through balance among physical, mental, and social well-being
Etiology
The origins and causes of illness
Biomedical Model
The viewpoint that illness can be explained on the basis of aberrant somatic process and that psychological and social processes are largely independent of the disease process; the dominant model in medical practice until recently
Conversion Hysteria
The viewpoint, originally advanced by Freud, that specific unconscious conflicts can produce physical disturbances symbolic of the repressed conflict; no longer a dominant viewpoint in health psychology
Psychosomatic Medicine
A field within psychiatry, related to health psychology, that developed in the early 1900s to study and treat particular diseases believed to be caused by emotional conflicts, such as ulcers, hypertension, and asthma. The term is now used more broadly to
Biopsychosocial Model
The view that biological, psychological, and social factors are all involved in any given state of health or illness
Acute Disorders
Illnesses or other medical problems that occur over a short time, that are usually the result of an infectious process, and that are reversible
Chronic Illness
Illnesses that are long lasting and usually irreversible
Theory
A set of interrelated analytic statements that explain a set of phenomena, such as why people practice poor health behaviors
Experiment
A type of research in which a researcher randomly assigns people to two or more conditions, varies the treatments that people in each condition are given, and then measures the effect on some response
Randomized Clinical Trials
An experimental study of the effects of a variable (such as a drug or treatment) administered to human subjects who are randomly selected from a broad population and assigned on a random basis to either an experimental or a control group. The goal is to d
Evidence-based Medicine
Uses the scientific methods to determine the best available treatments for disorders. Typically drawing on double-blind placebo controlled clinical trials, evidence-based medicine is increasingly the standard for clinical decision making in health care
Correlational Research
Measuring two variables and determining whether they are associated with each other. Studies relating smoking to lung cancer are correlated, for example
Prospective Research
A research strategy in which people are followed forward in time to examine the relationship between one set of variables and later occurrences. For example, prospective research can enable researchers to identify risk factors for disease that develop at
Longitudinal Research
The repeated observation and measurement of the same individuals over a period of time
Retrospective Designs
A research strategy whereby people are studied for the relationship of past variables or conditions to current ones. Interviewing people with a particular disease and asking them about their childhood health behaviors or exposure to risks can identify con
Epidemiology
The study of the frequency, distribution, and causes of infectious and noninfectious disease in a population, based on an investigation of the physical and social environment. Thus, for example, epidemiologists not only study as why certain cancers are mo
Morbidity
The number of cases of a disease that exist at a given point in time; it may be expressed as the number of new cases (incidence) or as the total number of existing cases (prevalence)
Mortality
The number of deaths due to particular causes
Meta-analysis
Combines and contains results from multiple studies to identify consistencies in patterns of research findings