Psychology of Health and Behavior - Essay Example

Psychology of Health and Behaviour 11/10/14 Behavioural changes are activities aimed at transforming someone’s conduct tobetter prospects of his or her life. Therefore, behavioural changes are not easy because people resists changes in their behaviours. In fact, it is a process that needs to be handled with a lot of care and precaution. In addition, it requires professional because they are trained in matters of behavioural changes. Care and professionalism are necessary requirements in achieving the goals of psychologists who in a person’s life. A person who is under the influence of habits, such as, excessive consumption of alcohol and smoking may be exposed to a lot of health problems. These diseases include cancer, cirrhosis among other that are very harmful and deadly to human. Therefore, there is always a need to help such people suffering from addiction to seek psychiatrists’ therapy. For that reason, the people will help the habitually challenged people in the society to overcome such habits through a series of serious counselling. The study will involve an analysis of Sally, who is a chronic cigarette smoker. Sally is suffering from the addition of nicotine and cannot quit smoking on her own. Smoking is dangerous, and it is feared that she could develop heart disease and lung cancer. She, therefore, need to be guidance on how she can do to stop smoking. There are many ways that psychiatrist advice smokers to do in order to overcome smoking addiction. One such method is a theoretical model that would improve her health and behaviour in order to address her situation. She says that she smokes as a result of a stressful situation in her life. One of the models that can be utilized to make effectively her stop smoking is the utilization of the Health Belief Model (Martin, Haskard-Zolnierek, & DiMatteo, 2010, p. 5). The model focus on the health problem that an individual may face out of his or her continued habit. Sally need to be guided through this model and be advised that her continued behaviour may lead to more suffering that would be more severe than the stresses in her life. The health and believe model is a suitable psychological model for Sally given that her smoking have entered into a chronic stage. The dangers accompanying her habit thus would be worse than her present situation. When this is applied to Sally, she can change her habit and become a non-smoker. The application of the Health Belief Model alone not be enough. Sally needs to be motivated in a way that will help her leave her habit and maintain a good health. Thus, motivation techniques need to be applied in her situation that will lead to overcoming challenge of quitting and help her heal from the effect of nicotine addiction. One of the motivational technique that will significantly motivate Sally will be motivational interviewing technique. Motivational interviewing involves getting the response of how the progress is about and allowing the patient to ask some questions (AFP, 2012). The counsellor is required to understand the patient well and make some changes where necessary. The changes to be applied are established and reflected from the outcome of the interview. Another means of motivating a patient like Sally can get is the use of empowering technique. Empowering entails feeding the patient with investigative details of other people challenges and how they are overcoming their addiction problem. When this method develops a significant transformation in their lives, then it became necessary for them to be empowered to continue using such method. When encouraged to use this method psychiatrists come up with motivation details that accelerate the rate of healing. Apart from the motivational techniques, persuasive techniques are also necessary for enhancing behavioural change. Persuasive techniques are the techniques applied to encourage persons to leave change their ways of life and adopt to a better and safe habits (Cherry, 2010). One of the techniques that are used to persuade people are establishing and creating individual needs. When the needs are created that were not there during the habitual life of a person, it presses people to leave their habitual habit. Sally, who is a habitual smoker, may start saving what she spent in buying cigarettes to do a better thing in the future. When her counsellor develops the need to save some cash in her life, she may quit smoking fast and instead save the money she was using for smoking. Another persuasive technique will be an appeal to social needs. Sally in her healing process may needs to be encouraged to develop a habit of acquiring some properties that enhance her social status. She may use her earnings that she has saved to purchase commodities that are appealing to society such as a house, a good car and other expensive items. Moreover, Sally needs to help develop memory of the process of rehabilitation by her counsellor about the effect of tobacco in her life. Recalling such effects will keep her off from going back to the same habit. She is also required to remember the motivation and persuasive techniques that the counsellor used to encourage her live a better life (Martin, Haskard-Zolnierek, & DiMatteo, 2010, p. 60). The chief skill she is required to use is the preservation rehearsal. The technique requires a person to repeat the information frequently. The information could be in writing or recording during counselling. Elaborative rehearsal that is an advanced technique that enable the patient to create a full memory code that is necessary to help remembers whatever she had learned and how to cope with life for better changes. Sally is also required to do more research on her own on how best she can accommodate change. The research may include how differently she is relating with people who were affected by her smoking. Moreover, she needs to know how she managed to leave the habits and live a better life. She also needs to understand how other people overcame similar challenges like hers. Through this, she will get encouraged and motivated and will be able to leave her habit in a short time. Addiction is a very serious problem to most of the people today. Most of the people, usually, turn to drugs, alcoholism and smoking whenever they are challenged by life. They, usually, think that involving themselves into these habits they will be able to overcome or forget about their current situation. Involvement into this custom is not needed. People must get involved in undertakings what is fruitful in their lives. Addition have made more people fail in their life when they are affected by consequences of alcoholism, smoking of abuse of other drugs. Therefore, to address these challenges psychiatrist have established behavioral health model to treat patients. Thus, psychological health behaviour is a useful tool to heal patients with behavioural illness. References AFP. (2012, September 11). Psychological strategies. Retrieved from Motivational interviewing techniques Facilitating behaviour change in the general practice setting: http://www.racgp.org.au/afp/2012/september/motivational-interviewing-techniques/ Cherry, K. (2010, October 19). Persuasion Techniques. Retrieved from About Education: http://psychology.about.com/od/socialpsychology/a/persuasiontech.htm Martin, L. R., Haskard-Zolnierek, K. B., & DiMatteo, R. M. (2010). Health Behavior Change and Treatment Adherence: Evidence-based Guidelines for Improving Healthcare. New York: Oxford University Press. Read More