Revise Health psychology: health problems for IB Psychology (6.2)

Health psychology rests on the biopsychosocial model: health and illness emerge from the interaction of biological factors (genes, hormones, neurotransmitters), psychological factors (thoughts, appraisals, expectancies) and social factors (culture, socioeconomic status, relationships). For any single health problem, all three levels are relevant, and a strong essay explains ONE problem through at least two of them rather than listing symptoms.

Watch the command term. 'Explain' or 'Outline' wants the mechanism made clear; 'Discuss' or 'Evaluate' additionally wants critical thinking — strengths, limitations and competing perspectives. Whatever the term, the structural move is the same: choose one problem, commit to it, and support each explanation with a study you actually use.

Stress is the body's response to a stressor — any demand perceived as threatening or exceeding one's resources. Acute stress is adaptive: it sharpens attention and mobilises energy to deal with an immediate challenge. The problem is chronic stress. When the response stays switched on for weeks or months, the same systems that once protected us begin to cause harm: chronic stress is associated with hypertension and cardiovascular disease, suppressed immune function, impaired memory, and raised risk of anxiety and depression. Because prolonged activation is so common in modern life, stress is one of the most widely studied — and most examinable — health problems in the option.

The physiological stress response runs on two pathways. The FAST one is the SAM axis (sympathetic-adrenal-medullary): the sympathetic nervous system signals the adrenal medulla to release adrenaline within seconds, producing the racing heart and heightened alertness of 'fight or flight'. The SLOWER, sustained one is the HPA axis (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal): the hypothalamus releases CRH, which prompts the pituitary to release ACTH, which drives the adrenal cortex to release cortisol. Cortisol frees glucose for prolonged effort — useful in the short term. But when cortisol stays elevated for months, it is implicated in damage to the hippocampus (harming memory), suppression of the immune system, and cardiovascular strain. This is the mechanism by which a psychological experience becomes a physical illness.

Supporting study — Newcomer et al. (1999). Aim: to test whether cortisol at the levels produced during stress impairs memory. Procedure: healthy adults were given tablets over several days — a high dose of cortisol equivalent to a major stressor, a low dose, or a placebo — and were tested on verbal declarative memory (recalling prose). Findings: the high-cortisol group showed significantly worse recall than the low-dose and placebo groups, and the impairment reversed once the cortisol was stopped. USING this study: it provides experimental (not merely correlational) support for the HPA explanation — manipulating cortisol directly changed cognitive performance — which is why we can argue cortisol is a cause of stress's harmful effects on memory, not just a correlate.

The biological account explains the machinery but not why the same event floors one person and energises another. Lazarus and Folkman's transactional model (1984) fills that gap. Stress, they argue, arises from the transaction between the person and the situation, mediated by two appraisals. PRIMARY appraisal asks 'Is this a threat, a challenge, or irrelevant?'. SECONDARY appraisal asks 'Do I have the resources to cope?'. Stress results only when perceived demands exceed perceived coping resources. On this view it is not the event itself but its interpretation that triggers the stress response — which is precisely why the model can explain individual differences that biology alone cannot.

Supporting study — Speisman et al. (1964). Aim: to test whether manipulating cognitive appraisal changes the physiological stress response to the SAME stimulus. Procedure: participants watched a distressing film of a painful rite while hearing one of several soundtracks — a 'trauma' track emphasising the pain, a 'denial' track downplaying it, an 'intellectualisation' track giving a detached anthropological narration, or silence. Physiological arousal (heart rate, galvanic skin response) was recorded. Findings: arousal was highest with the trauma track and markedly lower with the denial and intellectualisation tracks, even though the images were identical. USING this study: because only the appraisal — not the stimulus — was varied, the result directly supports the claim that appraisal shapes the stress response, giving the cognitive explanation experimental grounding.

Stress is not only inside the body and mind; social conditions shape how often the response fires and how long it lasts. Chronic stressors cluster by socioeconomic status: financial insecurity, poor housing, discrimination and, in particular, low control over one's work. The Whitehall studies of British civil servants (Marmot and colleagues) found a striking social gradient: lower employment grades had substantially higher rates of stress-related cardiovascular disease, and this was linked especially to low job control — how much say a person had over their own work — rather than to income alone. USING this: it shows a specifiable social variable (job control) predicts a physical health outcome, evidencing the sociocultural explanation and demonstrating that stress is patterned by social structure, not just individual temperament.

If you prefer addiction as your 'one health problem', the demands are identical — explain it from more than one perspective, using research. Addiction is a chronic, relapsing condition of compulsive drug use (or behaviour) despite harm, with tolerance and withdrawal. It carries heavy effects — health damage, social and economic cost — and high relapse rates, which is exactly why single-perspective explanations fall short.

The health psychology option, including the 'health problems' content, is common to SL and HL at this level — the explanations, studies and 22-mark Paper 2 essay demands are the same for both. There is no separate HL extension for this material, so the model answer and markband above apply to every student taking this option.