Psychology & Health

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Psychology & Health

Scheme of Work

Psychology & Health

Psychology & Health (OCR)

Welcome back to your 2nd year of psychology. We hope that you continue enjoying studying psychology at Wyke College and that it will meet all of your expectations. In pursuing it as an academic subject, we hope it manages to enlarge your understanding of the world and provides you with a useful examination pass.

The 2nd year of the course, like the first year, is divided into 3 units.

You will notice from the table above that we will be having an exam for the Psychology and Health unit in January 2004. The Psychology and Crime exam will be sat in June 2004 and the coursework folder will need to be completed for the end of April 2004.

As we did during first year, we will be providing you with ‘home made’ resources. For the psychology and health unit, as well as this document, you will require a document for each of the eight topic areas (stress, pain etc) as well as a document on exam techniques. We therefore strongly suggest that you have a ring binder to organise your notes.

There are a couple of good texts on the market listed below that you might want to look at. These are available in the library.

Banyard, Philip (2002) Psychology in Practice: Health. Hodder and Stoughton

Sarafino, E. (1990) Health Psychology: Biopsychosocial Interactions, 3rd Edition. Wiley

A digital version of this document can be found at

The 8 Topics

Importantly in contrast to the first year of the course which prescribes precisely which studies must be looked at, this part of the course prescribes only the topics.

Psychology and Health is divided into 8 topics (see table below). Each topic area is further subdivided into 3 sub topic areas (see table below).

The Exam

The psychology and health exam is split into 2 parts. Part A and Part B. You choose one question from two in Part A and again, one question from two in part B. You will therefore be doing two questions in the exam. Each question will be based on a different topic. Therefore there will be 4 different topics in the exam and you will be required to answer two.

Part A (The sub-topic bit)

In Part A there will be two question and you have to choose one. Each question will be from one topic area (e.g. stress) but will be worded in the style of the sub-topic question. Therefore there are three possible questions. If the question was on stress the three possible questions could be about the causes/sources of stress, the measures of stress or management of stress

The question in Part A will be split in to 2 parts. The first part will be asking you to describe a study/theory/explanation and the second part will be asking you to evaluate this. For example:

(a) Describe one study of the causes/sources of stress. [6]

(b) Evaluate this study of the causes/sources of stress [10]

For the descriptive part the examiners may use the words describe, outline or consider.

For the evaluative part the examiners may use the words evaluate, discuss, or compare and contrast.

Part B (The topic bit)

In Part B there will be two question and you have to choose one. Each question will be from one topic area (e.g. stress). There are therefore 8 possible questions the examiner can ask.

The question in part B will be split in to 3 parts. The first part will ask you to describe studies in an area (it is suggested that you use three studies), the second will ask you to evaluate this evidence and the third part will be asking you to apply this evidence. For example:

Describe what psychologists have discovered about pain [10]

Evaluate what psychologists have discovered about pain [16]

Based on the evidence you have discussed, suggest ways of managing pain [8]

Also note that the maximum marks for Part A are 16 whereas the maximum marks for Part B are 34. Therefore you need to be thinking about completing a Part A question in 30 minutes and a Part B question in an hour.

Psychology & Health (January 2002)

Psychology?

At this point it might be worth considering what psychology has got to do with health. Just one example is that, as psychologists, one of our main concerns is trying to understand behaviour. The horrible truth is that we can reduce the probability of ill health by changing our behaviour. For example, take a look at the study below.

A ten year study of 7000 people (Breslow and Enstrom 1980) found that on average people live longer and enjoy better health if they:

Sleep 7-8 hours a day

Have breakfast every day

Don’t smoke

Rarely eat between meals

Are near to their prescribed weight

Drink no or just a small amount of alcohol

Take regular exercise

In fact the study went as far as to say that people over the age of 75 who had followed these rules had an equal level of health to a 40 year old who followed fewer than three of these rules.

Behaviour is related to health and illness, and psychology tries to investigate that behaviour, find the connections between behaviour and illness, and encourage people to behave in ways that protect their health.

However if we consider in more detail below what we mean by health we can gain more insights about what psychology has to offer

The Biopsychosocial Model

The meaning of the root word 'health' is wholeness. It is intriguing to find that 'holy' and 'healthy' share the same root word. This link can be seen in pre-modern medicine where the role of psychology and social factors in determining health and illness was considered very important.

However the dominant model of medical science in the twentieth century has not treated health as a whole but has approached the body like a machine which is separated from the mind. The dominant medical health model of the twentieth century is called the biomedical model.

The biomedical model is a mechanistic and reductionist model. The body is treated like a machine that is fixed by removing or replacing the ailing part or destroying the foreign body that is causing the problem. [In fact most treatments you receive from your GP would not even be doing the above but would be simply trying to reduce the symptoms of the illness]

Within the framework of the biomedical model, only the biochemical factors of illness are considered. Social and psychological dimensions fall outside its narrow framework and are therefore ignored. Health according to practitioners such as GPs using the biomedical model might be defined as the absence of illness or injury.

The biomedical model has come under increasing criticism. In fact, psychologists such as Freud believed that almost all illnesses were psychosomatic. Psychosomatic means that both mind (psyche) and soma (body) are involved.

The major challenge to the biomedical model in the twenty first century is the biopsychosocial model. This model does not suggest that we disregard biomedical influences. The idea is to expand the model to include the many psychological and social factors that fall outside its narrow framework.

By studying this course I hope that you will agree with us that we need to take a wider view of health. The biopsychosocial approach forces the practitioners to consider the effects of their treatment on the 'whole' patient not just the part they are trying to 'fix'.

The biomedical model neglects the whole because it excludes everything but biological factors. Rather than viewing health as the absence of disease perhaps we should consider it more of a matter of outlook and of how well we feel the body is working. To be healthy is to be vigorous, alert and happy to be alive despite an occasional bout of illness.

Healthy Questions

1. What is the biopsychosocial model of health (apart for a mouthful)?

1. Think of an illness or disease.

1. How is the illness influenced by psychological and social influences?

1. Think of a condition that you think should not be treated by the National Health Service