Psychology and Health Problems

Psychology and Health Problems
Brooke Huntley
Mat/117
01/16/2011
Donna Volk

Psychology plays a large role in understanding health problems and managing factors that influence these health problems. The   psychological field has done numerous studies to better understand the cause and effects to these health problems. In the following paragraphs one will read about two different health problems, and how psychology has dug deeper to understand and manage them.
Psychology looked into many different factors to understand the how, when, and whys. " There exist a variety of factors that determine one's susceptibility to illness; these factors are divided into six categories: biological, social cultural, environmental, personality, behavior, and stressors." (Tate, A. 2008) When looking into two different health problems; coronary heart disease and cancer; there are major risk factors and contributing risk factors. These risk factors explain problems. Knowing these risks can help people lessen their chance of having these health problems. When talking about heart disease one must know that coronary heart disease is the most common and also the leading cause of death. psychologist have researched and studied groups of people at a time to learn more about this disease. "Stress is a contributing risk factor for coronary heart disease.   The effects of emotional stress, behavior habits, and social status on the risk of heart disease and heart attacks have not been proven."(, ) There are many reasons why this could be, but a major reason is because so many people go through stress everyday and not everyone has a heart attack. Now there are plenty of reasons why stress can cause heart failure and one of those are adrenaline. "These hormones raise blood pressure, which can injure the lining of the arteries. When the arteries heal, the walls may harden and thicken, making it easier for plaque to build up."(, ) Psychology has found that with practicing different calming...