Author Profile

Dr. Aris Stephen famously traded the sterile walls of a traditional medical laboratory for a rustic, sunlit cliffside bungalow in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. He famously conducts his pioneering research in behavioral medicine alongside his golden retriever, Barley. Rejecting the old-school "biomedical model," Dr. Stephen is a fervent champion of George Engel's biopsychosocial framework. He firmly believes that healing isn't just about fighting off pathogens with prescriptions. Instead, he focuses on how a patient's stress levels, community support, and emotional resilience dictate their long-term health outcomes. Health Psychology is designed to bridge the gap between hard clinical science and human empathy. Driven by his own battle with burnout early in his career, Dr. Stephen wrote the book to teach medical and psychology students how to communicate effectively, help patients manage chronic pain, and foster true behavioral change. He is a regular contributor to and reviewer on PubMed, continuously pushing for a holistic approach to medicine. Dr. Stephen earned her Ph.D. in social psychology from Yale University and held professorships at Yale and Harvard before joining the UCLA faculty. His research investigates the psychosocial factors that influence physical and mental health across the lifespan, particularly focusing on how individuals respond to stress and the concept of "tend-and-befriend" behavioral responses. Dr. Stephen has received the American Psychological Association's (APA) Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine.

About The Book

Health psychology is the study of psychological and behavioral processes in health, illness and healthcare. It is concerned with understanding how psychological, behavioral and cultural factors are involved in physical health and illness, in addition to the biological causes that are well understood by medical science. Psychological factors can affect health directly (such as stress causing the release of hormones such as cortisol which damage the body over time) and indirectly via a person's own behavior choices which can harm or protect health (such as smoking or taking exercise). Health psychologists take a biopsychosocial approach, this means that they understand health to be the product not only of biological processes e.g., a virus, tumour, etc. but also of psychological processes e.g. stress, thoughts and beliefs, behaviors such as smoking and exercise and social processes e.g. socioeconomic status, culture and ethnicity. Health Psychology is a smart and readable textbook that should appeal to both instructors and students of health psychology. Its overall structure is intuitively appealing and progresses from health beliefs to factors associated with becoming ill to the actual state of being ill. New to this edition is a wonderful chapter on the demographics of health and health behaviours. Using a number of striking graphs, the author highlights the disparities in health by geography, social class, and gender. The book's greatest appeal, however, is its focus on the major ideas in health psychology. The reader is not bombarded with subtleties of dozens of studies; rather the broader theories are emphasized.

Table of Contents

Preface
1.
AN INTRODUCTION TO HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY ....................................1
1.1 The Background to Health Psychology
1.2 What is the Biomedical Model?
1.3 What are the Aims of Health Psychology?
1.4 What is the Future of Health Psychology?
1.5 What are the Aims of this Book?
2.
HEALTH BELIEFS...................................................................................10
2.1 What are Health Behaviours?
2.2 Why Study Health Behaviours?
2.3 Lay Theories About Health
2.4 Predicting Health Behaviours
2.5 Cognition Models
2.6 Testing A Theory - Predicting Sexual Behaviour
2.7 Social Cognition Models
2.8 Problems with the Models
2.9 Developing Theory Based Interventions
2.10 Assumptions in Health Psychology
3.
ILLNESS COGNITIONS..........................................................................43
3.1 What does it Mean to be Healthy?
3.2 What does it Mean to be Ill?
3.3 What are Illness Cognitions?
3.4 Leventhal’s Self-Regulatory Model of Illness Cognitions
3.5 Why is the Model Called Self-Regulatory?
3.6 Stage 1: Interpretation
3.7 Stage 2: Coping
3.8 Assumptions in Health Psychology
4.
ROLE OF HEALTH PROFESSIONALS’
HEALTH BELIEFS...................................................................................70
4.1 What is Compliance?
4.2 Predicting Whether Patients are Compliant: The Work of Ley
4.3 Testing a Theory - Patient Satisfaction
4.4 How Can Compliance Be Improved?
4.5 The Wider Role of Information in Illness
4.6 The Role of Knowledge in
Doctor- Patient Communication
4.7 Problems with the Traditional Approach to Doctor-Patient Communication
4.8 The Problem of Doctor Variability
4.9 Assumptions in Health Psychology
5.
SMOKING AND ALCOHOL USE............................................................92
5.1 Who Smokes?
5.2 Who Drinks?
5.3 Health Implications of Smoking and Alcohol Use
5.4 What is an Addiction?
5.5 Historical Changes in Attitude and Theoretical Approach
5.6 What is the 2nd Disease Concept?
5.7 Problems with A Disease Model of Addiction
5.8 What is the Social Learning Perspective?
5.9 Initiating and Maintaining an Addictive Behaviour
5.10 The Cessation of an Addictive Behaviour
5.11 Interventions to Promote Cessation
5.12 Putting Theory into Practice - Worksite Smoking Ban
5.13 Methodological Problems Evaluating Clinical and Public Health Interventions
5.14 Relapse in Smoking and Drinking
5.15 A Cross-Addictive Behaviour Perspective
5.16 Assumptions in Health Psychology
6.
EATING BEHAVIOUR..........................................................................125
6.1 What is A Healthy Diet?
6.2 How Does Diet Affect Health?
6.3 Who Eats A Healthy Diet?
6.4 Developmental Models of Eating Behaviour
6.5 Cognitive Models of Eating Behaviour
6.6 A Weight Concern Model of Eating Behaviour
6.7 The Causes of Body Dissatisfaction
6.8 Psychological Factors
6.9 Dieting
7.
EXERCISE............................................................................................158
7.1 Developing the Contemporary Concern with Exercise Behaviour
7.2 What is Exercise?
7.3 Who Exercises?
7.4 Why Exercise?
7.5 What Factors Predict Exercise?
7.6 Exercise Relapse
8.
SEX.....................................................................................................173
8.1 Developing the Contemporary Research Perspectives on Sex
8.2 Sex as a Risk in the Context of STDs/HIV and AIDS
8.3 Testing A Theory - The Situation and Condom use
8.4 The Broader Social Context
9.
SCREENING........................................................................................200
9.1 What is Screening?
9.2 The History of the Screening Ethos
9.3 Screening as a Useful Tool
9.4 Psychological Predictors of the Uptake of Screening
9.5 Testing A Theory - Predicting Screening
9.6 Screening as Problematic
10.
STRESS...............................................................................................221
10.1 What is Stress?
10.2 A Role for Psychological Factors in Stress
10.3 Stress and Changes in Physiology
10.4 Measuring Stress
10.5 Putting Theory into Practice
10.6 The Interaction Between Psychological and
Physiological Aspects of Stress
11.
STRESS AND ILLNESS.........................................................................238
11.1 Does Stress Cause Illness?
11.2 Stress and Changes in Behaviour
11.3 Stress and Changes in Physiology
11.4 Individual Variability in the Stress-Illness Link
11.5 Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI)
11.6 The Impact of Chronic Stress
11.7 Coping
11.8 Social Support
11.9 Personality
11.10 Control
11.11 Control and Social Support in Stress and Illness
12.
PAIN...................................................................................................271
12.1 What is Pain?
12.2 Early Pain Theories - Pain as a Sensation
12.3 Including Psychology in Theories of Pain
12.4 The Gate Control Theory of Pain
12.5 The Role of Psychosocial Factors In Pain Perception
12.6 The Role of Psychology in Pain Treatment
12.7 Putting Theory into Practice - Treating Chronic Pain
12.8 The Outcome of Pain Treatment and Management -
A Role for Pain Acceptance?
13.
PLACEBOS AND THE INTERRELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BELIEFS, BEHAVIOUR AND HEALTH.................................................................292
13.1 What is A Placebo?
13.2 A History of Inert Treatments
13.3 How do Placebos Work?
13.4 The Central Role of Patient Expectations
13.5 Focus on Research 13.1: Testing a Theory -
‘Doing as You’re Told’ as a Placebo
13.6 Cognitive Dissonance Theory
13.7 The Role of Placebo Effects in Health Psychology
Bibliography........................................................................................311
Index...................................................................................................318