PSY 325 1st EditionExam # 1 Study Guide Lectures 1-7Lecture 1 Understand trends related to life expectancy:Health Psychology came developed in the 1970s and is thus a fairly new field. One hundred years ago, the average life expectancy in the US was 47.3 years old. It is currently 77 years of age in the US and even higher in some countries. Factors affecting life expectancy There are many factors to consider when it comes to the affects on human beings’ life expectancy. A century ago, diseases like pneumonia, TB, diarrhea, andenteritis were far spread. They were so common due to contaminated foods, sick people, and impure drinking water being common too. Infectious diseases were the leading cause of death in 1900. Now the leading causes are chronic illnesses.o Other factors have been more important than advances in medical care for the increase in life expectancy. Fewer people in the US now smoke cigarettes than in the past. This behavioral change helped deaths due to heart disease decline and improved health care.o Prevention of disease also contributes to the recent increase in life expectancy.o Widespread vaccinationo Safer drinking water and milk supplies all reduce infectious diseaseso More efficient disposal of sewage and better nutritiono Relatively minor things: advances in medical care such as antibiotics, new surgical technology, and more skilled intensive care personnel. These things have NOT played as big of a role.What is the single most important reason life expectancy has increased? The most important contributor to the increase in life expectancy (page 7) is the lowering of infant mortality.What are the leading causes of death, and how that varies based on age?o Heart diseaseo Cancero StrokeAll these are chronic diseases, which are now the leading causes of mortality in the US.  For people between ages 1-44, unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death. Violent deaths and homicides are highly ranked as well. For adults 45-64 years old, cardiovascular disease and cancer become leading causes of death and unintentional injuries drop to the third place ranking.  As people age, obviously they are more likely to die so the causes for death for older people dominate the overall figures for causes of death. Factors related to mortality and reasons whyEthnicity, Income and Disease: U.S. is ranked 24th among industrialized nations and 50th among all nations. In regards to ethnicity: European Americans (47th) would rank higher in life expectancy than African Americans (113). But neither race should expect to live longer than people in Japan, Canada, Iceland, Australia, the UK, Italy France, Hong Kong, Israel and many other countries. Hispanics have more poverty and lower educational levels similarly to African Americans. These socioeconomic disadvantages translate into health disadvantages. Thus, poverty and low educational level both relate to health problems and lower life expectancy. The effect poverty has on health occurs far before birth. More exposed to abusive situations, and poor mothers are more likely to deliver low birth weight babies.Very wealthy people have better health than people who are just wealthy. The higher the educational level, the less likely people are to engage in unhealthy behaviors. Trends related to health care, including medical costsThe second major change, next to decrease in infant mortality, in health is the skyrocketing cost of medical care. Medical care costs are now up to 15 percent of the GDP. The costs of health care for one person in 1970 were $1,067. In 2007 they were $7,290. Know Sheldon Cohen’s research on colds, and its implicationsSheldon Cohen and his research team weighed mucous from specimens’ tissues becausethey wanted an objective measure of how severely their participants caught the common cold. They examined both the psychological and social factors that predict the likelihood that a person will succumb to infection. Each participant is injected with the cold or flu virus then observed for a week in a hotel room. His findings exposed the inadequacy of the biomedical approach to understanding infection. Those who remain healthy are less likely to have death with stress, have better sleep habits, and overall experience more positive emotions and more social skills. The conclusion from this experiment is that it takes more than just exposure to a virus to succumb to a cold or flu bug. Psychological and social factors can contribute to producing illness as well. Thus the biopsychosocial model accounts better for these influences.Biomedical vs. biopsychosocial models of healthBiomedical model: defines health as the absence of disease. It is the traditional view of Western medicine. It conceptualizes disease exclusively as a biological process that is an almost mechanistic result of exposure to a specific pathogen—a disease-causing organism. Removing pathogens restores health, thus this view focuses on disease and sees it as being traceable to a specific agent. This view worked well for when the world needed to conquer infectious disease. It became inadequate when chronic illnesses replaced infectious diseases as the leading cause of death. Biopsychosocial model: a more holistic approach to medicine Considers social, psychological, physiological and even spiritual aspects (social influences) of a person’s health. Have two advantages at least over the biomedical model: 1. It incorporates more than biological conditions but also psychological and social factors. 2. Views health as a positive condition. What is behavioral medicine?“The interdisciplinary field concerned with the development and integration of behavioral and biomedical science knowledge and techniques relevant to health and illness and the application of this knowledge and these techniques to prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation” (Schwartz and Weiss, 1978 p.250)It integrates biomedical science with behavioral sciences (especially psychology)The goals of behavioral medicine are Improved prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitationLecture 2 & 3 – Research MethodsWhat is the scientific attitude?o Approach the world with curious skepticism. o Requires humility; your ideas could be wrong and you need to be prepared to accept and admit that. o Question asking is a very important componento *Critical thinking—thinking without blindly accepting arguments and conclusionsReliability and Validity-