PSY3206: Introduction to Health Psychology

Anxiety, depression, and difficulty adjusting to medical conditions are just a few of the factors that can complicate recovery for hospitalized patients. This book describes how health psychologists, working with the medical team as consultants, can help determine the causes of such symptoms and provide appropriate treatment and actionable input for doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, social workers, and others. In the ever-evolving US healthcare system, pressing needs for cost containment and preventive care present new opportunities for psychologists to work with medical inpatients in hospital settings. This book is a guide to health psychology trainees and seasoned clinical psychologists who wish to expand their practice into consulting. Using examples modeled after actual medical notes, readers will learn to review and understand patient medical records, build rapport with patients, and have frank discussions of the complicated issues that can arise during patient interviews. The book also offers recommendations for handling special circumstances in the inpatient setting, such as pain, delirium, and end of life care.

This comprehensive book examines the organization, financing, delivery, and outcomes of behavioral health (i.e., alcohol, drug abuse, and mental health) services from both U.S. and global perspectives. Addressing the need for more integrative and collaborative approaches in public health and behavioral health initiatives, the book covers the fundamental issues in behavioral health, including epidemiology, insurance and financing, health inequities, implementation sciences, lifespan issues, cultural responsiveness, and policy. Featuring insightful research from scholars in an interdisciplinary range of academic and professional fields, chapters fall into three distinct sections: Overview: Outlines the defining characteristics of behavioral health services and identifies significant challenges in the field At-Risk Populations: Explores critical issues for at-risk populations in need of behavioral health services, including children in school environments, youth in juvenile justice systems, and persons with developmental disabilities, among others Services Delivery: Presents a rationale for greater integration of health and behavioral health services, and contextualizes this explanation within global trends in behavioral health policy, systems, and services An in-depth textbook for graduate students studying public health, behavioral health, social work policy, and medical sociology, as well as a useful reference for behavioral health professionals and policy makers, Foundations of Behavioral Health provides a global perspective for practice and policy in behavioral health. It promotes better understanding of the importance of integrating population health and behavioral health services, with an eye towards improving and sustaining public health and behavioral health from national, regional, and global perspectives.

Having the knowledge and capacity to deliver therapy to a diverse population is recognized as benefiting client-therapist relationships and producing positive clinical outcomes. In fact, the APA requires that psychologists be aware of and respect the cultural characteristics of their clients which includes psychologists being aware of any biases and prejudice they may hold. Being aware of cultural characteristics, which include age, gender, ethnicity, race, religion and other cultural factors, is important.  In the United States, minority ethnic groups are growing substantially, with 28% of the U.S. population identifying as races other than white (U.S. Census, 2016). Additionally, approximately 65 million people in America speak a foreign language that is not English, with over 25 million people having limited English language proficiency. With a diverse pool of clients, helping professionals should be better prepared to work with diverse clients. This handbook offers clinicians a comprehensive resource with which to work with diverse populations. The myriad discussions among the chapters include: Ethical guidelines for working with culturally diverse clients Cultural considerations in psychological assessment and evaluation  Behavioral health service delivery with culturally diverse clients Cross-cultural factors in the treatment of trauma related disorders Cultural considerations in the assessment and behavioral treatment of substance use disorders  Handbook of Cultural Factors in Behavioral Health expertly offers clinicians a comprehensive set of resources and tools that will assist them working with diverse clients. Clinicians working with culturally diverse clients, as well as researchers and students learning about how cultural factors are relevant to the helping profession will all find this volume an integral addition to their library.

This book describes key methods and instruments for assessing diet-related factors, physical activity, social and environmental factors, physical characteristics and health-related outcomes in children and adolescents. These tools were developed and deployed within the framework of the pan-European IDEFICS and I.Family cohort studies. These population-based field studies were funded within the 6th and 7th European Framework Programme, respectively, and were intended to assess the prevalence and aetiology of lifestyle-related diseases in children, focusing on overweight and obesity, and to develop effective strategies for primary prevention. In the course of a decade we undertook a major research endeavour, collecting standardised data from children, families, neighbourhoods, kindergartens, pre-schools and schools in eight European countries, employing a uniform cross-cultural methodology. This resulted in a rich picture of the daily lives and living contexts of children and their families. Studies encompassing childhood and adolescence face the particular challenge of the transitions from pre-school to primary school and from childhood to adolescence; accordingly, the instruments used need to be adapted to different developmental stages while maintaining their comparability across the age range. In young children, questionnaires have to be completed by proxies, usually their parents, while older children, particularly adolescents, can provide a major part of the requested information themselves. This book presents suitable designs, methods and instruments for data collection in studies of children and adolescents. Each chapter explains the development and background of the instruments applied in the surveys and summarises the current state of knowledge. All chapters were written by key experts in their respective research fields. We are grateful for their valuable contributions and their enthusiastic support in producing this book, which also presents survey experiences in which practice does not always follow theory. Participants' responses can on occasion be unexpected and unpredictable, but meeting these challenges can also enrich epidemiological surveys and yield methodological refinements. We sincerely hope that the book and the online material will be of considerable value to other research teams.