Medical Psychology – Lecture 1 (UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM)
There are three relevant fields for medical psychology:Behavioural medicineThis field focuses on the psychobiological approach towards understanding behavioural factors in health and disease (e.g. effect of stress on immune system). Health psychologyThis field focuses on primary and secondary prevention through behaviour change. It is based on theories from clinical and social psychology (e.g. interventions to promote stopping with smoking). Medical psychologyThis field focuses on clinical practice and research regarding human behaviour in a medical context (e.g. effective treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome). Secondary interventions refer to intervention for people who already have a health condition but want to prevent this condition from getting worse. The definition of health that is used determines who is seen as ill or healthy. A definition of health can be physical (1), subjective (2), behavioural (3), functional (4), psychosocial (5), social (6) and cultural (7). Health can be seen as a continuum. Medical treatment focuses on the illness side of health whereas health promotion techniques focus on the wellness side of health. Accurate diagnoses are more likely if it is understood how people’s experience shape perception (1), reporting of symptoms (2) and help-seeking behaviour (3). Embodied cognition states that many aspects of cognition are influenced by the bodily state. The medical model states that the cause of disease is determined by biological processes. This implies that the resolution of disease is also determined by biological processes. In clinical practice, this is seen as the medical doctor striving to restore biological perturbations to obtain an optimal equilibrium (e.g. depression is an imbalance of serotonin and curing depression is restoring the balance of serotonin). Limitations of the medical model are no recognition of relevant psycho-social influences on disease (1) and there is no...
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