Usefulness of Self-regulation to Health Psychologist - Essay Example

 The understanding of the involvement of biological, psychological, environmental, and cultural factors with physical health is the only concern ofhealth psychology. The health psychologists work along with medical professionals and try to find out the reasons and patterns in the effects of behavior factors, such as lifestyle, stress, health beliefs etc., on public health. They also consider social conditions like cultural influences, family relationships, social supports etc. Their main focus remains on biological features like genetic predisposition. Self-regulation is the system of alert personal health management. This paper tries to critically evaluate the usefulness of self-regulation to the health psychologist (Bandura, 2005, pp. 11-12). Health psychologists: Psychologists, responsible for making the understanding of how social, behavioral, and biological factors affect health and illness, are named as health psychologists. They work with many health care professionals, such as physicians, nurses, social workers, pharmacists etc. to initiate research and provide medical assistance and treatment services. Many of them focus mainly on improving the health conditions of people and to reduce the risk of diseases. For example, health psychologists suggest to reduce smoking habits and to improve daily nutrition. They also study the relationship between health conditions and individual features. For instance, personal characteristics like thrill seeking, anger, emotional stability, depression etc. affect health conditions very largely. These are studied by health psychologists (Prescott, 2006, p. 50-55). Self-regulation: The self-regulation theory marks its view regarding the need for self-management of diseases. It notes that although the doctor can give a person sound medical advice, the implementation of those advices depend largely upon the patient. Through self-regulatory measures it can take proper measures to get rid of his illness. It also mentions that for medical treatments to be fully effective, the concerned patients should take proper self-regulatory measures to improve his health conditions. To improve his health conditions a patient must understand action plans that will resolve the health issues. Not only that, the patient should monitor deliberately the results to understand the effectiveness of those actions taken and if necessary to take alternative and more effective action plans. There are several steps related with the self-regulation of health management. In the first step, the patient deliberately monitors all the results regarding his health status. In the second step, he changes his behavior if the desired result or effect is not realized. And in the final step, the patient reinforces the effect and continues with his existing behavior, if the desired effect is realized (Van Damme et. all, 2009, pp. 367-371). The Implementation Intention theory: The implementation intention theory is nothing but a self-regulatory strategy. It is based on the if-then-plan. This plan explains that if situation X arises, then the person will perform and get the response Y. By using this theory a person can achieve better goals and success in terms of self-regulation. This theory basically deals with the need for proper implementations of good intentions which people generally express as their desired goals. This theory focuses on the need for taking proper actions toward more goal directed behaviors and to the proper implementations of those goals. According to this theory, after forming a definite plan of goal, the concerned situation become more activated and mentally represented and hence it leads to improved perception, attention, and memory regarding the concerned critical situation (Gollwitzer, 1999, pp. 494-496). Self-regulation and health psychologists: The concept of self-regulation is highly related with health psychology and hence with health psychologists. The proper self-regulation is always expected to lead to better health status for the concerned person. In this context the important fact is that the person under consideration has properly implemented his intensions towards achieving good health. If the patient has implemented his actions to realize his desired goals of good health status, then the task of the doctors and health psychologists become easier (Prescott, 2006, pp. 123-124). The need for proper health regulation by the patient is the most desired outcome for any doctor or health psychologist. Health psychologists try to evaluate the reasons concerning the changes in the behaviors of the patients regarding their own health status. For example, proper implementation and self-regulation of a person who was told by his doctor not to smoke may ease the task for his doctor easier and make the person healthier. Here the self-regulation of reducing the habit of cigarette consumption can lead to better health. Stress, mental toughness, anger all these aspects are expected to affect the patient’s desire for self-regulation. Hence, they can affect his health status as well (Ridder and Wit, 2006, pp. 50-52). As a health psychologist, it is very much important to understand all these aspects of human behavior and hence act accordingly. These aspects greatly help the psychologist to adopt medical policies for the concerned patient. It is always been argued that self-regulation is the best medicine (Vohs and Baumeister, 2010, p. 55). The psychological factors relate to the effectiveness of self-regulation to make a better and healthy life. A health psychologist tries to identify and define those psychological factors to help the patient to be more aware regarding self-management of his disease (Karademas et. all, 2011, p. 515). Examples: There are three cases where the usefulness of self-regulation is the most. One is reducing the smoking habit. The second one is related to the intake of junk foods. The final one is related to the unhealthy lifestyles of the people (Kelly et. all, 2010, pp. 730-735). All these facts require more self-attention as well as regulation in order to carve down the health problems associated with these aspects. Here the implementation intention theory plays a crucial role in developing self-regulation practices. In case of chronic diseases (Oftedal et. all, 2010, p. 2550) like diabetes this self-regulation is important (Oettingen, Mayer and Jennifer Thorpe, 2010, pp. 965-970). Again there are three examples where the self-regulation creates larger problems. In case of diseases like cancer, self-regulation and according changes in the behavior can create more problems for the patient. Again in case of the nutritional patterns, self-regulation and unnecessary changes in the behavior can create huge problems (Chiou et. all, 2011, p.2225). And finally, in case of the weight loss and other sophisticated health related issues, self-regulation is dangerous (James, 2011, p. 72). Conclusion: From a health psychologist’s point of view self-regulation is important because it helps reducing the health problems and at the same time properly uses the prescriptions and medicines in an optimal way. Hence, on this ground it can be said that self-regulation is useful. But at the same time one needs to be cautious regarding the use of self-regulation. One must not forget that self-regulation means proper regulation by following doctor’s advice, not to follow one’s own advice and prescriptions. References: Bandura, A., (2005), The Growing Centrality of Self-Regulation in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, The European Health Psychologist, (1), 11-12 Chiou, Wen-Bin, Wan, Chin-Sheng, Wu, Wen-Hsiung and King-The Lee, (2011), A randomized experiment to examine unintended consequences of dietary supplement use among daily smokers: taking supplements reduces self-regulation of smoking, Addiction, 106 (12), 2221-2228 Gollwitzer, Pater, M. (1999), Implementation Intensions: Strong Effects of Simple Plans, American Psychologist, 54 (7), 493-503 James, J. Annesi, (2011), Self-Regulatory Skills Usage Strengthens the Relations of Self-Efficacy for Improved Eating, Exercise, and Weight in the Severely Obese: Toward an Explanatory Model, Behavioral Medicine, 37 (3), 71-76 Kelly, Allison C., Zuroff, David C., Foa, Clare L. and Paul Gilbert, (2010), WHO BENEFITS FROM TRAINING IN SELF-COMPASSIONATE SELF-REGULATION? A STUDY OF SMOKING REDUCTION, Journal of Social & Clinical Psychology, 29 (7), 727-755 Karademas, Evangelos C., Tsalikou, Calliope, Tallarou and Maria-Christina, (2011), The Impact of Emotion Regulation and Illness-focused Coping Strategies on the Relation of Illness-related Negative Emotions to Subjective Health, Journal of Health Psychology, 16 (3), 510-519 Oftedal, B., Karlsen, B. and Edvin Bru, (2010), Life values and self-regulation behaviours among adults with type 2 diabetes, Journal of Clinical Nursing, 19 (17/18), 2548-2556 Oettingen, Gabriele, Mayer, Doris and Jennifer Thorpe, (2010), Self-regulation of commitment to reduce cigarette consumption: Mental contrasting of future with reality, Psychology and Health, 25 (8), 961-977 Prescott, Anne, P., (2006), The concept of self in medicine and health care, USA: Nova Science Ridder, Denise T. D. de and Wit John Bertha Franciscus de, (2006), Self-regulation in health behavior, UK: John Wiley (50-52) Vohs, Kathleen D. and Baumeister, Roy, F., (2010), Handbook of Self-regulation: Research, Theory and Applications, New York: The Guilford Van Damme, Stefaan, Crombez, Geert, Goubert, Liesbet and Christopher Eccleston, (2009), Current issues and new directions in Psychology and Health: The costs and benefits of self-regulation - a call for experimental research, Psychology & Health, 24 (4), 367-371 Read More