Poor Health Behaviour is Difficult to Change - Coursework Example

Poor health behaviour is difficult to change’ Introduction Despite the growing awareness about the significance of maintaining healthy body and terrible consequences of bad health habits, people do not abstain from adverse health practices and poor health behaviours including alcohol consumption, smoking, substance abuse, and eating fast foods. Even though the UK government spends millions of pounds of money on health promotion campaigns and other health services, the number of people developing poor health behaviours has been on rise. People cannot easily abandon their worse health habits like alcohol consumption or smoking because they really enjoy the instantaneous pleasures obtaining from such health practices. Another problem is that it is difficult for an individual to change habits/behaviours developed at the early stages of his/her life. Researchers indicate that although the public health department and other social organisations take extreme efforts to convince people about the dreadful consequences of poor health behaviours like smoking or substance abuse, none of these bodies suggest people effective ways to give their unwanted health behaviours. This paper will explore why poor health behaviours is difficult to change. This will also give particular focus to concepts, theories, and models underpinning health promotion and lifestyle behaviour change. Models of behaviour change Although there are several theories of health promotion and lifestyle behaviour change, transtheoretical model (TTM) is the most commonly applied model of behaviour change in health settings. This model was developed by James O. Prochaska and Carlo C. DiClemente in 1980s, and the central idea of model is that at any given point of time, an individual is in one of the five stages of change: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, or maintenance (Harvard Health Publications, 2007). TTM presumes that individuals move from one stage to the other and each stage is considered to be a preparation for the following one. Therefore hurry in stage change or skipping stages is most likely to lead to setbacks. It is important to note that the same strategy may not be fittable to different stages (Harvard Health Publications, 2007). Although this model was primarily developed to support the studies of alcohol, substance abuse, and smoking, now it is also applied to other health behaviours like exercise and dieting. This model is beneficial for any individual who is motivated to change to assess his situation and develop potential strategies (Ibid). At the precontemplation phase, individuals have no conscious intention of achieving a change due to lack of information or awareness or the demoralization caused by a failed attempt to change in the past (Burbank & Riebe, 2002, p.186). Although people have no plans to change their poor health behaviour in this stage, their awareness may be influenced by outside forces like public awareness campaigns, media reports, illness, or emotional experiences. In order to move from this initial phase, an individual must sense that his unhealthy behaviour has become an obstacle to accomplishing his personal goals. In the contemplation stage, individuals are considering a change in the near future, say six months. Here, the individual has recognised that his behaviour is really a problem and he is considering doing something to address this issue. However, still the individual is not committed to taking any action. At this point, health educators can deploy different techniques to assist individuals to move to the next stage. At the preparation stage, the individual makes plans to achieve the change he anticipated. To illustrate, an individual who wants to lose his body weight may join a health club or purchase home exercise equipments. It is particularly essential for individuals to forecast potential obstacles and identify the ways to manage them once the individual moved to the preparation stage. At the action stage, the individual has already achieved the planned change and begun to face the challenges of life that would appear in the absence of that old unhealthy behaviour. The individual should practice the alternatives he has identified in the preparation phase to manage the difficulties. For instance, if work stress persuades the individual to consume alcohol, the individual can take a walk or play badminton or soccer after the office time. Once the individual continued to follow the new behaviour change for at least six months, he is in the maintenance stage. Now the individual is striving to integrate the behaviour change achieved into his daily life. In order to perform well in the maintenance phase, it is vital for the individual to avoid the situations of triggers associated with the old behaviour. Lifestyle issues in health and social care Health researchers clearly indicate that health habits developed at the very early stages of the life will be well established and are extremely difficult to change. This is the reason why health practitioners force their clients to maintain healthy diet and exercise routine while giving up poor health behaviours like excess consumption of alcohol and smoking at young ages. Once poor health behaviours have been developed in an individual, they can have significant influence on the metabolic functions of the victim’s body, and therefore such behaviours tend to be very long lasting (NTL World, n.d.). Plante (2012) reflects that 97% of people who lose their weight are likely to regain it within five years. Plante narrates his personal clinical experience to show why it is very hard to change the poor health behaviours of an individual. He recently had a patient whose problem was binge drinking. The victim was a college student and he had believed that it was normal for people of his age to consume heavy amount of alcohol and to engage in out-marriage sexual relations (Ibid). He tried to justify his view by saying that most of his co-agers do the same. He also believed that he could change his binge drinking behaviour once he completed his college studies. Plate strongly says that his client is wrong. Referring to previous research studies, the author points that drinking habit developed during late teenage or early adulthood period cannot be changed easily (Plante, 2012). Similarly, today children eat more fast foods than other healthy food items because fast foods are very tasty and they continue to follow this food even after they are matured. Hence, such people find it extremely difficult to switch to homely food/health food pattern within a short period of time. Another problem with poor health behaviour change is that people often obtain little immediate incentive for adopting good health behaviours. It is obvious that normally people develop health habits in childhood and adolescence where most people maintain an improved health status. Therefore poor health behaviours like smoking, drinking, and lack of nutrition and physical activities have no apparent effect on individuals’ physical functioning when they are in childhood or adolescence. Johnson, McCaul and Klein state that “the cumulative damage that these behaviours cause may not become apparent for years, and few children and adolescents are concerned about what their health will be like when they are 40 or 50 years old” (as cited in Taylor, 2009, p.49). As a result, children or adolescents are less likely to think about the need of eliminating their poor health behaviours. When they reach the age of 40s or 50s, they may experience difficulties with their health and physical functioning, and consequently they may strive to avoid their poor health behaviours but it would be too late to achieve the change. Sometimes cognitive factors can also be attributed to a person’s inability to change his poor health behaviour (Ogden, 2012, pp.451-453). If an individual thinks that certain unwanted health behaviours are particularly beneficial for him or he senses that he would be vulnerable to an underlying illness unless he practices a particular behaviour, the individual is less likely to achieve a change in his health behaviour. To make it clear, if a chain smoker strongly thinks that he would be vulnerable to depression if he stops smoking, it would be really a cumbersome task for him to eliminate this behaviour. Many emotional factors may also contribute to a person’s difficult to eliminate his poor health behaviours (Stephens, 2008, p.62). Evidently unhealthy behaviours like smoking, drinking, or drug abuse are “pleasurable, automatic, addictive, and resistant to change” (Taylor, 2009, p. 43). As a result, people are less likely to be motivated to change such behaviours. According to health practitioners, many people find it very difficult to change their poor health habits if those habits are enjoyable (NIH News, 2012). Affective attitudes including emotional beliefs concerning a specific health habit can often become a barrier to achieving an expected change in health behaviour. Clinical evidences suggest that most of the people are motivated to change by a sense of fear, guilt, or regret and such a motivation is not long-lasting. Experts like Green and Tones (2010) who study behaviour change argue that long-lasting change in health behaviours is likely to result only when the change is emerged from self-motivation and positive thinking (p.150). According to a series of 129 different studies by the Economic and Social Research Council in 2006 on behaviour change strategies, it was confirmed that motivating people to change poor heath behaviours using the elements of fear or regret is the least effective strategy (Ibid). Current strategies for health promotion and lifestyle change While analysing the current strategies for health promotion and lifestyle change, it seems that today governments and other public health organisation take vehement efforts to promote healthy lifestyle changes in the society. The UK government spends a significant percent of its revenues on health awareness programmes so as to spread positive health messages across the country and improve the overall health status of the UK population (Hastings & McDermott, 2009, p.68). The UK government co-operatively operates with health organisations and other social interest groups to eliminate unhealthy behaviours like drinking, smoking, increased dependence on fast foods, and sedimentary lifestyle. While evaluating the UK government’s healthcare expenses over the last few decades, it is clear that the government particularly focuses on the establishing a healthy food culture in the country. The UK government has been launching a number of high-profile health campaigns to improve the country’s food culture since 1997 “including Health Action Zones in poor food areas, the five-a-day fruit and vegetables campaign, the school fruit programme, and the change4life campaign on obesity” (Hickman, . 2010). The awful thing is that the government’s spending of millions of pounds of money on the public health sector has no significant effect on public health behaviours as UK people are eating as badly as badly as they were a decade ago. A nationwide nutrition survey reflected that the UK government achieved little progress in addressing the diet related health issues in the country. In addition, UK Food Standards Agency admitted that health promotion campaigns are of no use unless people are willing to improve their food pattern. Today visual media play an inevitable role in encouraging bad health behaviours like drinking, smoking, drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, and eating fast food as motives, TV serials, short films, and documentaries show alcohol consumption as a common practice among high class people (Atkinson, et al., 2011). This gives teenagers and youngsters a negative message that alcohol consumption is a vital habit to obtain wider social acceptance. Likewise, high profile celebrities like Hollywood actors/actresses, soccer players, and athletes appear in the Ads of liquor products and this promotional strategy is a major reason contributing to the increase in sale of alcoholic beverages. There is a significant percent of drinkers arguing that moderate drinking can benefit various chemical activities in the body (Harvard School of Public Health (n.d.). However, it is sure that the idea of moderate drinking is difficult to work as evidences suggest that few people can drink moderately. Conclusion From the above discussion, it is clear that changing poor health behaviours is really a difficult task due to several reasons. The major reason is that people do not obtain any significant immediate incentive for changing an unhealthy behaviour, which may be often pleasurable and addictive. In addition, it is a challenging task to change a health behaviour which is well established in teenage or adolescence itself. Generally, bad health habits like drinking or smoking can have no noticeable effects on children or adolescents, and hence they continue to practice these habits. When they experience health problems later in their adulthood, they might have practiced it for years, and hence they may find difficulty in changing the behaviour. In addition, many cognitive as well emotional factors also contribute to this difficulty. References Atkinson, A., Elliott, G., Bellis, M & Sumnall, H. 2011. “Young people, alcohol and the Media”. Joseph Rowntree Foundation. 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