Health psychology midterm 3

Question 0

Coping styles

Answer 0

An individual’s preferred method of dealing with stressful situations

Question 1

Coping

Answer 1

1. Thoughts and behaviors used to manage the internal and external demands of situations that are appraised as stressful
2. Coping is a process and is dynamic (changes over time)

Question 2

Avoidant coping style

Answer 2

The tendency to cope with threatening events by withdrawing, minimizing, or avoiding them; believed to be an effective short-term, though not an effective long- term, response to stress

Question 3

Approach/ vigilant coping style

Answer 3

1. The tendency to cope with stressful events by tackling them directly and attempting to develop solutions
2. Problematic in the short term, but better in the long run

Question 4

Emotion-focused coping

Answer 4

1. Efforts to regulate emotions associated with a stressful encounter; can be associated with distress
2. Effective when a stressor cannot be changed
3. Can lead to rumination, inactivity, negative thinking
4. Women tend to use this style

Question 5

Problem- focused coping

Answer 5

1. Attempts to do something constructive about the stressful situations that are harming, threatening, or challenging an individual.
2. Men tend to use this style

Question 6

Personality moderators of stress

Answer 6

1. Negative affectivity: a pervasive negative mood marked by anxiety, depression, and hostility; experiences negative emotions and has inhibition of expressing these emotions socially; elevated cortisol secretion, can affect adjustment to treatment; report more physical symptoms; more likely to use health services; Neuroticism: related to poor health
2. Positive emotional states: better mental and physical health, longevity, lower cortisol levels, better responses to vaccinations, resistance to illness after exposure to virus
3. Optimism: cope more effectively with stress and reduce risk to illness, fosters personal control, use problem focused coping and social support resources
4. Self-esteem: most protective at low levels of stress
5. Resilience: positive life events, relaxation, opportunities for rest, and renewal may help people cope more effectively
6. Psychological resilience: experiencing positive emotions during intensely stressful events
7. Coherence about ones life: sense of purpose or meaning, religious or spiritual

Question 7

Psychological control

Answer 7

1. The belief that one can determine ones own behavior, influence ones environment, and bring about desired outcomes
2. Used in interventions to promote good health habits
3. Used for stressful medical procedures

Question 8

Disease prone personality

Answer 8

1. Psychological stress involving depression, anger, hostility, and anxiety may form the core of a ‘disease prone personality’ that predisposes certain people to disorders.

Question 9

Cheerful people

Answer 9

1. Cheerful people die somewhat sooner than people who are not cheerful
2. It may be that cheerful people grow up being more careless about their health and as a result, encounter health risks

Question 10

Stress carriers

Answer 10

Individuals who create stress for others without necessarily increasing their own level of stress

Question 11

External moderators of stress: socioeconomic status

Answer 11

1. Time
2. Money
3. Education
4. Employment: working women who have adequate childcare and have husbands who help with the household, benefit psychologically from their work. Women without these resources show higher levels of distress
5. Friends
6. Family
7. Standard of living
8. Positive life events
9. A sense of stressors
10. SES: potent external resource that influences health. People with high SES have fewer medical and psychiatric disorders, and lower mortality

Question 12

Types of social support

Answer 12

1. Tangible: material support, services, financial aid, goods
2. Informational
3. Emotional: reassurance, warmth, and nurturance
4. Invisible: best support is when a person is unaware that’s/he is receiving it

Question 13

Social support

Direct effects hypothesis

Answer 13

1. Social support is beneficial during non stressful times as well as during highly stressful times

Question 14

Social support

Buffering hypothesis

Answer 14

1. The health benefits of social support are chiefly evident during periods of high stress
2. When there is little stress, social support has few health benefits

Question 15

Social support

Matching hypothesis

Answer 15

1. Social support is best when there is a match between ones needs and what one receives from others in social network
2. Ex. Intrusive grief therapists can cause harm following a traumatic event

Question 16

Expressive writing

Answer 16

1. Written exercises are designed to encourage emotional expression
2. Disclosure often useful for coping, but can lead to rumination
3. Confiding in others may reduce the physiological reactivity associated with stressful events

Question 17

Self disclosure

Answer 17

1. Disclosure of emotional experiences can have beneficial effects on health
2. Ability to confide in others or consciously confront ones feelings may eliminate the need to obsess about and inhibit events, which may reduce physiological activity associated with the event

Question 18

Stress management programs

Answer 18

1. Self affirmation: positively affirming values and other personal qualities
2. Relaxation training: meditation, yoga, guided imagery, TM
3. Time management: planning and establishing priorities, avoid time wasting
4. Social skills training: trained to confide in friends, seek advice from experts, use time with others for relaxation and positive reinforcement
5. Assertiveness training: identify individuals causing stress and learn how to deal with them

Question 19

Effects of social support on the support providers

Answer 19

1. Giving social support to others at moderate levels has beneficial effects on mental and physical health, and can retard illness progress
2. Benefits both giver and receiver

Question 20

Factors that negatively affect patient provider communication
Baby talk

Answer 20

1. In attentiveness: patients are interrupted 23 seconds into their explanations, not having the opportunity to finish their concerns. Dr. Diagnoses happens more quickly now, patients have average of 7.5 minutes with GP
2. Use of jargon: dr. use of complex terms, keeps patient from asking too many questions, physician not certain of problem
3. Baby talk: dr. Result to baby talk or simplistic explanations because they underestimate what a patient will understand. May forestall questions from patients, best to lie somewhere between technical jargon and baby talk.
4. Nonperson treatment: depersonalizations of patient
5. Stereotypes of patients: communication erosion when physicians encounter patients or diseases they prefer not to treat.

Question 21

Technical quality of care and perceived quality of care

Perceived warmth of doctor

Answer 21

1. Technical quality of care and perceived quality of care are unrelated
2. Patients often judge adequacy of care by criteria that are irrelevant to its technical quality

Question 22

Three main types of insurance

Answer 22

1. Private fee- for- service care: each visit followed by a bill, which the patient pays out of pocket
2. Health Maintenance Organization HMO: managed care, primary care physicians must give referrals/ authorization to see specialists, pays monthly rate
3. Preferred Providers Organizations PPO: must see a preferred provider, don’t need referrals to specialists, more expensive

Question 23

Diagnosis-related groups(DRG)

Answer 23

1. A patient classification scheme that specifies the nature and length of treatment for particular disorders
2. Ex. Hernia surgery candidates, assumed to have same length of hospitalization, same types and amounts of treatment, cost

Question 24

Stereotypes of patients and types of patients who are disliked by doctors

Answer 24

1. Negative stereotypes of the elderly, Black, Hispanic, low SES patients; sexism; patients seeking treatment for depression or other psychological disorders
2. Physicians give less info, less supportive, and demonstrate less proficient clinical performance
3. Gender matching between patient and provider foster more rapport and disclosure
4. Physicians of both genders prefer male patients
5. Physicians prefer healthier patients, and those with acute illness rather than chronic

Question 25

Factors that cause patient dissatisfaction with their health care

Answer 25

1. Provider not always concerned with patient satisfaction (salary from HMO not patient
2. Some evidence that quality of care has eroded
3. Less incentive for offering emotionally satisfying care

Question 26

The three C’s of hospital care

Answer 26

1. Cure: physicians responsibility to restore patient to good health
2. Care: orientation of the nursing staff, humanistic side of medicine
3. Core: administration ensures the function of the system runs smoothly (resources, services, personnel)

Question 27

Nosocomial infection

Answer 27

1. Infection that results from exposure to disease in the hospital setting
2. One of the leading causes of illness and death in the US
3. Hospital workers, especially physicians likely to break rules designed to control infections

Question 28

Causes of patient non-adherence

Answer 28

1. Nonadherence: The failure to comply fully with treatment recommendations for modifications of a health habit or an illness state
2. Creative non-adherence: The modification or supplementation of a prescribed treatment regimen on the basis of privately held theories about the disorder or its treatment

Question 29

Children’s responses to hospitalization

Answer 29

1. Anxiety of being alone, isolated, mistakes hospitalization for punishment, taken away from the family, confinement, regression, bed wetting, embarrassment to expose their bodies, painful tests

Question 30

Recent trends in healthcare

Answer 30

1. Patient egalitarianism
2. Holistic health: A philosophy characterized by the belief that health is a positive state that is actively achieved; usually associated with certain nontraditional health practices
3. Decreasing length of hospital stay (70% vacancy rate)

Question 31

Ethnicity and cultural influences on health

Answer 31

1. In US, Africian Americans have higher mortality rates for 12 of the 15 leading causes of death
2. Particularly, an increase risk in hypertension, not genetic (African Americans in other countries from US do not have increased risk)
3. Much cultural variability

Question 32

Effects of socioeconomic status on health

Answer 32

1. As SES increases, mortality rates decline
2. SES important predictor of health status
3. Low SES associated with poor nutrition, habits, and behaviors like smoking, limited access to healthcare
4. Found in industrialized and non industrialized socitey
5. Major modulator is stress (feeling of no control in low SES)

Question 33

French vs. American approaches to health

Answer 33

1. French Drs prescribe more spa visits and rest
2. In Europe, Dirt and germs strengthen immune system, less emphasis on daily bathing
3. In US, doctors more likely to perform surgery
4. In US, germs are a threat to health, dr.s prescribe more antibiotics than anywhere else in the world