Psychological perspectives for Health and social care - Assignment Example

PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES FOR HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE Psychological Perspectives for Health and Social Care Psychology is mainly described as the study of human behaviour. It involves the way humans behave and all the internal and external influences that are accountable for that behaviour. There are many psychological perspectives and theories recognized by psychologists that are used to explain this human behaviour, the major ones being behaviourist, cognitive, social learning, biological, psychodynamic and humanistic perspectives. For an individual working in health and social care, an understanding of these perspectives plays an important role in helping people in being in charge of their lives, meeting their needs and supporting changing behaviours. Furthermore, there are various psychological approaches to health and social care practices that one can adopt in order to improve psychological development (Moonie 2005; Brotherton & Parker 2008). The behaviourist perspective implies that changes in behaviour are caused by learning from external factors such as rewards and punishments. According to the work of popular behaviourists, Pavlov and Skinner, one learns from the consequences of ones actions; these actions are connected with the satisfaction (reward) or displeasure (punishment) that follows them, taking into consideration life experiences, genetics, individual progress and much more. The cognitive perspective is more about an individual’s thinking process, opinions, motivation and beliefs having an impact on behaviour. This inspires individuals to take responsibility for their own health and modify abnormal feelings and thoughts. Social learning is probably the commonest perspective; it is impossible for one to exist in a group, culture or society without conforming due to the social influence; an example of this would be smoking cigarettes because ‘all the cool kids do it’. The biological perspective states that behaviour is confirmed by genes, or rather the physical structure and function of the brain as it directs our behaviour; for instance excessive eating (which can lead to obesity). The psychodynamic perspective, founded by a medical doctor, Sigmund Freud, states that certain childhood experiences are too uncomfortable to recall, due to which they are repressed. However, these experiences are still there in the unconscious mind and, as the person grows older, these repressed thoughts eventually lead to a state of depression or anxiety. This state can be recognized through certain physical symptoms such as through dreams, slips of the tongue and word connections. The final psychological perspective, the humanistic perspective, assumes that it is a primary tendency of humans to grow and achieve their potential. However, if external factors prevent them from achieving this potential, humans develop psychological and health problems, such as mental disorder. Thus, the main aim of the humanistic perspective is to understand human nature using simple principles; the most influential psychologist, Carl Rogers, proposed two concepts, self-actualization and self-concept. The self-actualization concept states that humans are stimulated by the need to achieve the best level and failure in doing so results in destructive nature-this level can only be achieved if their environment is good enough. The self-concept states that humans with low levels of self-esteem-which result from lack of unconditional positive regard during childhood-are vulnerable to depression (Moonie 2005; Walker et al 2007; Russell & Jarvis 2003). Approaches to health practice are many, one of them being ‘operant conditioning’. For instance, when a new born baby cries, its mother gives it food, which induces pleasure. Thus, for the baby, the act of crying is associated with pleasure. Such operant conditioning programmes are used to identify well behaviour and reward it in care facilities; patients showing good behaviour and cooperation are rewarded with praise, thus making the process of treatment or recovery easier. Cognitive approaches are every beneficial to those individuals with learning difficulties or emotional problems and stress as they encourage individuals to change their thinking by addressing to their own problems and thus take better care of themselves. For example, a therapist would challenge the patient’s negative thoughts and replace them with positive responses. Psychodynamic counselling is one of the most known approaches for treating depression and anxiety in health practice-it involves a psychodynamic counsellor helping the patient to understand and manage anxiety by exploring the roots of negative feelings. The humanistic approach used in health practice is Perlss Gestalt approach, which consists of a range of powerful methods designed to motivate people into greater honesty and awareness (Moonie 2005; Walker et al 2007; Russell & Jarvis 2003). Approaches related to social perspectives can indeed be very effective for social care practices. Positive role models can be used in advertisements or campaigns to influence people to follow good healthy habits, inform them of ways to prevent from acquiring certain diseases and informing them about the symptoms of certain diseases, in order to promote good health and help them in getting the necessary medical care in time. In order to be more effective, this can be done in ways appealing to the social groups targeted. The biological perspective encourages people to take part in surveys or experiments involving new drugs or treatments related to the disease contained by those people. People taking part in these experiments do it willingly because they believe that due to the experiments, their disease can be cured. Thus this approach also plays an important role in health practice. Without this approach, new medicines and drugs would never have been created. Psychodynamic psychotherapy proposes that many psychological problems are created by unresolved difficulties in certain types of relationships made in childhood. This approach greatly helps people to resolve disturbing memories. The person-centred care approach implies that care workers should show empathy, respect and genuineness towards the patient, keep that patient at the centre of the interaction and use effective communication skills; this kind of approach shows patients that care workers understand their position and respect their point of view, thus helping the patient overcome depression (Russell & Jarvis 2003; Moonie 2005; Walker et al 2007; Brotherton & Parker 2008). Despite their positive outcomes, there is a certain degree of difference between the psychological perspectives. Although behaviourism implies that changes in behaviour occur due to the consequences of that behaviour, it ignores an important aspect; the ability to ‘use the head’ and make sensible decisions, a factor which is often involved only in cognitive perspectives. The humanistic perspective is mainly related to understanding human emotions, instead of behaviour or cognition, and sees relationships as the root cause of psychological problems. Therefore, it is very similar to psychodynamic perspectives-the only difference between them is that the humanistic perspective has a rather positive opinion of human nature; it sees people as fundamentally good and places emphasis on the potential an individual can achieve. Biological perspectives are very important as well; unlike behaviourist and psychodynamic perspectives that depict how environment and experiences affect one’s development, biological perspectives show an understanding of the role of genes and how one is influenced by one’s genetic-make up. Most importantly, biological perspectives enhance one’s understanding of other approaches to psychology. However, although biological experiments can give sick people relief, this relief is not guaranteed as there can be side effects from these experiments as well and, usually, once the drugs are stopped from being used, the sickness resumes, thus causing discomfort (Moonie 2005; Russell & Jarvis 2003). Psychological perspectives play an important role in preserving good health and supporting patient-related care. On the other hand, human behaviour is the main thing that causes humans to carry out tasks or take necessary actions, such as calling an ambulance if a person is injured badly. Psychological perspectives explain different aspects of human behaviour and the way this behaviour develops or changes depending on internal and external factors. The principal psychological perspectives are behaviourist, cognitive, social, biological, psychodynamic and humanistic, each of them having their own reasons for human behaviour and how it affects health and social care. Psychological approaches related to these perspectives also play a major part in determining and maintaining health and social care (Moonie 2005). Bibliography BROTHERTON, G., & PARKER, S. (2008). Your foundation in health and social care a guide for foundation degree students. Los Angeles, Sage.  MOONIE, N. (2005). Health & social care: AS level for AQA : GCE AS level double award. Oxford, Heinemann. RUSSELL, J., & JARVIS, M. (2003). Angles on applied psychology. Cheltenham, UK, Nelson Thornes. WALKER, J., PAYNE, S., & JARRETT, N. (2007). Psychology For Nurses And The Caring Professions. 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