Download Wellness, Health Psychology and Positive Coping

Wellness, Health Psychology
and Positive Coping
Cicilia Evi GradDiplSc., M. Psi
Health is a state of complete physical, mental
and social well-being, and not merely the
absence of disease and infirmity
WHO (1948)
Wellness
• Refer to states of optimal physical, mental,
and emotional health
• Halbert L. Dunn (1961)  wellness is a
state in which a person had:
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A zest for life
A way of living that maximized potential
A sense of meaning and purpose
A sense of social responsibility
Skills for adapting to the challenges of a changing
environment
• Wellness perspectives encompasses the
benefits of exercise, nutrition, stress
management, emotional self-regulation,
social support and personal growth – and
also health promotion
Health Psychology
• Focus on all the behavioral factors that
might affect a person’s health  use
psychological knowledge to help prevent
risk factors for disease, increasing
compliance with health directives, and
creating public policy for a better health
care system
Psychoneuroimmunology
• PNI  the relationships between
psychological processes (especially
emotion), the functioning of the nervous
system, and the body immune system
• Stress – Cold connection hypothesis:
– Greater social support  less cold
– Lower social support  4x more to become ill
Psychological Factors Important
to Health
• Human being is a holistic organism  all
the elements are able to communicate
with each other and must have some
influence on each other
• So, what are the important psychological
factors that influence health?
Social Support
• Include emotional support (caring, empathy), getting
positive feedback about our behavior, receiving helpful
information, willingness of others to give us their time or
other forms of assistance
• Our perception that we are loved!
• Greater resistance to disease, lower rates of coronary
heart disease, faster recovery from heart disease and
heart surgery and lower mortality; increase compliance
with medical treatments, reduce level of medication,
speed up recovery
• Support of family and friends  less arterial
blockages in patient with Type A personalities
• Perceived racial or ethnic discrimination can
have a negative impact health
• For women  correlated with lower
complications during pregnancy and delivery
• Cancer  18 months longer than women with
only conventional treatment
• Marriage men have fewer infectious
diseases and even live longer, lower chest
pain due to poor blood supply to the heart
 men who believed their wives showed
them love
• As a child  less risk for heart disease,
ulcers, hypertension and alcoholism
• Social support  health  social support
• Loneliness  negative effects on immune
functioning, health and psychological wellbeing
• Pets  enhance health  lowering blood
pressure, reducing rates of angina and
increasing longevity
– Fish tank  stress free environment  lower
blood pressure
Compassion and Health
• Simply by watching someone be kind and
sympathetic to others  changes in immune
system responses
• By watching certain movies  effect affiliation
and power motives
– High affiliation  engage more in social
interactions and to have more positive social
relationships
– High power motives  competition,
achievements and individualism
Humor and Health
• Hippocrates prescribed laughter to his patients on 4th
century BC!
• Defense mechanism of humor and able to laugh at
oneself of the situation  greater adjustments and wellbeing
• High sense of humor  high on optimism, extroversion,
and capacity for intimacy, and scored low on
neuroticism, less negative self-esteem, better coping
strategies, recover from illness, cope with life stress and
anxiety about death/mortality, enhance immune system,
reduce psychological experience of pain
Music and Health
• Coping with trauma  through non-verbal
expressions in music or art
• Relaxing sounds  lower stress hormones and
blood pressure, increase immune system and
endorphin level (positive moods)
• Tibetan singing bowls, Gregorian chants, singing
of Jewish prayers and drumming
• Healthy heartbeats sounded musically pleasing,
while unhealthy hearts sounded a bit off key or
out of rhythm
Emotional Expression and
Health
• Writing  a way to deal with trauma and
difficulties
• Sharing experiences can be therapeutic 
decline visit to professional mental health, better
immune system, lower blood pressure, less
distress  helpful to resolution focus
• After writing difficult memories and experiences
 feeling worse!  the positive effects come a
few days later
Good Cry?
• Crying is not always a good stress reliever 
due to crying styles and reasons of crying
– Coping mechanism, to manipulate others, or
response to a very happy events
– Only extroverted and emotionally stable person can
find relief and increase positive emotions after crying
– Neurotic  cry often and weeping  no positive
emotions
– Transformative weeping  response to profound
spiritual experiences  weeping for joy
Positive Coping
• “A response aimed at diminishing the
physical, emotional and psychological
burden that is linked to stressful events
and daily hassles” (Snyder & Dinoff, 1995)
• Effective coping should reduce the burden
of immediate stress and also contribute to
longer-term stress relief  by build
resources that will inhibit or buffer future
stress challenges
• Resources can be physiological (better
health status), psychological (greater
subjective WB), or social (helping to foster
more intimate soc support network) 
multidimensional approach
• Positive coping  thriving  both
enhanced psychological and physical
functioning after successful adaptations
Importance of Daily Hassles
• Smaller daily hassles can be more
problematic for us effect a person’s
current mood and persistent negative
mood will effect well-being in long term
• Big events  birth, death of loved ones,
funeral, wedding  stressful impact lasts
for 3 months  infrequently happen and
have social rituals which help to move on
Dimensions
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Coping Styles
Coping Resources
Personality Styles
Coping Strategies
Coping Styles
• Emotion-focused coping  attempts to
change negative emotions
• Problem-focused coping  attempts to
change the situation that caused the
stress
• Avoidance  seek to avoid the problems
Coping Resources
• Positive emotionality  impact health
status and longevity
• Cognitive Interpretation of events  the
meaning we give to the events
• Optimism  learned optimism (Seligman,
1990)  focus on the positive and the
possible to respond to stressors with an
attitude of hope and optimism
• Perceived control
– People with internal locus of control  engage in
more adaptive coping styles and more health-related
behaviors  tentative
– Placebo effects  remembered wellness
• Self-efficacy  the belief that we have the ability
to perform, or capacity to learn, the behaviors
necessary for us to reach the desired goals 
change our way of working
Personality Styles
• Hardiness  not a victim, but active
determinants of their life  3 cognitive
factors:
– A sense of control over their lives  confident that
they will be able to cope, not knowing how
– A sense that stress they’re facing as a challenge
rather than a crisis  opportunities to grow
– A sense of commitment to the various areas of their
lives
• Sense of coherence  a unique set of
personality traits that combine to create an
orientation to life that allows people to interpret
life stressors in a positive and adaptive way  3
major factors:
– Meaningfulness  how life makes sense on
emotional level  suffering as life lessons
– Comprehensible  find ways to derive meaning from
future stimuli
– Manageability  not feel victimized by life events or
unfair life treatment
Coping Strategies
• Maintaining positive social contacts and
keeping a sense of humor and optimism
• Healthy lifestyle, frequent exercise, regular
meditation, having a good massage
• Regular and consistent use of various
techniques for maintaining positive
relationships with one’s emotional and
social well-being