Authors: Michael S. Myslobodsky
ISBN-13: 9789812384584, ISBN-10: 9812384588
Format: Paperback
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company, Incorporated
Date Published: October 2004
Edition: 1st Edition
Health psychology is an offer of help, an effort to understand how biological, behavioral, and social factors influence health and illness. As one of the fast-growing sub-specialties, it has now outstripped other divisions of psychology in terms of excitement in the public eye. And yet a new occupation was built on somewhat unrealistic, idealized assumptions. The title of this book was therefore chosen to emphasize the fact that an extensive critique of those assumptions is essential. This book proposes arbitrary boundaries for a discourse on health psychology. The array of subjects is based on two major themes: the foundation of health psychology and the range of disorders where psychological knowledge might benefit the sick; and the question of whether or not health psychology has a systematic and pragmatic structure so as to qualify as a profession.
1 | The point of departure : the pillars of the health psychology edifice | 1 |
2 | 'Bad boys' and prenatal programming | 47 |
3 | Between psychiatry and medicine : illness in search of a place | 83 |
4 | The deadly trio | 119 |
A | The obesity epidemic | 119 |
B | Cognitive decline : factors and targets | 153 |
C | Self-destructive behavior : the cultural perspective | 193 |
5 | Collective exaggerated emotions | 225 |
6 | A complementary point of view | 251 |
7 | Holistic philosophy and a recipe for causative goulash | 301 |
8 | If health psychology is the answer, what was the question? | 343 |