What is health psychology?Health psychology is the study of behaviour when it comes to health, illness and healthcare. Health psychology focuses on individual strengths and puts emphasis on prevention and adaption during all phases from health to illness. Questions like How to remain healthy for as long as possible? and How to adapt in the most healthy way? are related to this. Health psychologists work in health care (private practice, medical psychology department in the hospital, rehabilitation centres, medical centres), research, policy (local or federal government, developmental aid organisations) and primary prevention and training centres (Hersenstichting, KWF, Voorlichtingsbureau Voeding). How can we prevent unhealthy behaviour?There are three forms of prevention. Primary prevention is a method to keep people healthy for as long as possible. The target group of this form of prevention is healthy people. Secondary prevention focuses on finding early signs of an illness. This is done by screening and early treatment. The symptoms that may occur are still reversible at this stage. The target group for secondary prevention is (healthy) people with an increased risk of developing a certain condition. Tertiary prevention is based on the prevention of symptoms growing worse and rehabilitation. The people who this type of prevention is aimed at have already developed a certain condition. What is ‘health’?There are different opinions on the exact meaning of health. Some people see health as being not ill, which means showing no symptoms and not having to visit a doctor. Others see health as a reserve/resource (quick recover, strong family), behaviour (looking after yourself), physical fitness and vitality, psychological well-being (being in balance, enjoyment, harmony) or as a function (being able to do what you have to do or what you want to do). According to the WHO, health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-...

What is health promotion?When talking about health promotion at the worksite, many things may pop up in your mind, like dealing with the (un)healthy food offered in the canteen, dealing with those who are smoking, bad sitting positions and offering fitness at the workplace. There have been multiple generations of WHP programmes. The first programmes mainly focused on safety and quality of the products. For example, they wanted to make sure that the remains of cigarettes would not end up in the food, since some would smoke while producing food. In the 60s/70s the focus of WHP programmes shifted to the top management. It became clear that top management experienced a lot of stress and that there was a higher prevalence of heart attacks and such among top management. Those WHP programmes focused on improving their health behaviour, by motivating them to quit smoking, exercise and eat healthy food. The third generation of WHP programmes focused on improving medical risk factors. Now it was easier to assess things like glucose and blood pressure. Therefore, questions like Can we reduce high blood pressure/glucose/cholesterol? were asked, since risk factors like these were associated with things like strokes. In the 80s, the fourth generation of WHP programmes shifted their focus to health improvement and health behaviour, by promoting healthy nutrition and exercising.Nowadays, WHP programmes focus on health wellness and psychological well-being. This generation of WHP programmes will be discussed later on. Why health promotion at the worksite?It is important to promote health behaviour at the worksite, since life styles are connected with mortality and morbidity, but to other things as well, like absenteeism, health care costs (which are higher for those who show unhealthy behaviour) and productivity. In the USA the health insurance is based on the employer paying health care costs of employees. Therefore it is important for those...

There are many factors which influence symptoms and symptom perception. An experiment is done to show this. Factors like temperature, background information and cognition, colours of the objects and environment are examples. The experiment consists of two parts. During the first part of the experiment, the scientist said touching the ice water with chemical substances in the tank would increase pain and during the second part of the experiment, the scientist said the water tank was filled with pain reducing substance. This kind of information and the different appearances of the substances in the tanks can influence one’s perception of their symptoms and stated level of pain. ComplaintsAbout two third of the general practitioner’s come across patients’ complaints which they have no explanation for. Somatically unexplained physicial symptoms are quite common in general practice. About 20-50% of the complaints are somatic. This means that no objective physical distortions or disrupted bodily processes can explain the complaints. These complaints often disappear spontaneously, usually after reassurance by the general practitioner. The Symptom Perception Model describes how psychological factors influence symptom perception. One of these factors is negative affectivity. Negative affectivity is the tendency to experience negative mood, feel distressed and feel critical about oneself, and to view the self and the world in generally negative terms. It is related to neuroticism. Symptom perception can lead to long-term activation and reactivation of symptom related cognitive networks, like paying attention to and earlier detection of somatosensory signals, interpretation of ambiguous internal and external information in terms of somatosensory symptoms and attribution of signals as somatosensory symptoms. There is a bidirectional relationship between the attention paid to the symptoms and the perception of those symptoms. An overview of this...

Why do we have pain?Pain is a phenomenon which occurs in a wide variety of medical conditions, but it also occurs in the absence of any physical problems. Pain warns us that something is wrong with our bodies and therefore we can act in certain ways to prevent injuries from getting worse. Of all psychical symptoms presented in practice, 50% of the symptoms are pain, 20-30% are respiratory related symptoms and 20-25% of the symptoms are non-pain and non-respiratory in nature, for example fatigue and dizziness. Pain can be defined as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage. Pain has a sensory and emotional component (fear and anxiety of developing pain and actual physical pain). Tissue damage is not necessary to experience pain: pain may occur in the absence of any physical problem. The two most frequently reported reasons for consulting a primary care physician are common colds, low back pains (in 85% of patients consulting for low back pains, only minor pathology is present) and headaches (usually no clear physical can be determined). How can pain be classified?Pain can be classified either according to cause or according to duration. According to cause there are four types of pain. Nociceptive pain is (musculoskeletal) pain due to tissue damage and causes pain in muscles, bones, joints and/or skin. For example a fracture, burn wounds or RA cause pain receptors to be activated and therefore cause the feeling of pain. Neuropathic pain is a consequence of damage to (or pathology of) the central/peripheral nervous system. It causes changes at the level of the nervous system to become permanent in nature over time and it therefore is difficult to treat. Many compare it to a sensation of needle pricks, electrical shocks, burning or freezing sensation or the sensation as if ants are crawling up and under their skin. Allodynia is when pain is...