Health behaviours.
Health behaviours are actions taken by a person to maintain their health status. These behaviours are also taken to overcome negative health behaviours to regain health status, or to gain new positive health behaviours. Health and behaviour can be influenced by a range of things such as attitudes, culture, education and time. The medical model sets out to treat health behaviours by their symptoms and not consider the psychological problems that can contribute to the illnesses. Therefore, other models which focus on psychological impacts, such as health belief model, cycle of change and social learning theory, can be better suited in certain situations.
The medical model is used almost worldwide to explain negative health behaviours and illnesses by looking at physical functioning as if the body were a machine. It looks for the physical causes of illnesses and presence of disease, such as injury and infections, without looking at the other factors involved. Social influences and psychological impact is ignored. Whilst it restores health by focusing on treatment and management of symptoms and the benefits are visible to all almost instantly, the model doesn’t focus on prevention of the diseases and some people may not benefit from medication alone. Repeatedly treating symptoms and not finding a cause can make this model very costly, especially if the factors that are overlooked are a major contributing factor that needs help. A person who grows up in a deprived area with less access to education may be increasingly susceptible to drug use because of social influences. Without the education about the drugs, they will believe their social influences. They are more likely to be depressed or suffer from other psychological issues which can also contribute to drug use. None of these psychological factors are considered when looking at the medical model. The medical models would treat the symptoms of drug misuse such as anxiety, depression or insomnia without looking at the psychological factors influencing why they’re taking drugs in the first place. This is where other models can be used to manage or treat health behaviours, such as the health belief model.
There are many psychological factors that influence health behaviours such as stress, diet and culture. Stress can negativity influence health behaviours by causing people to have poor decision making skills, which can lead to anger and depression. Poor decision making skills can lead to risk taking health behaviours such as turning to alcohol or drugs for an escape. When people are stressed they are more likely to over or under eat as a form of control. However, if used effectively, stress can be turned into a positive. Stress can cause a person to analyse themselves and their situations and accomplish the best outcome.
Diet is another factor that influences health behaviours. If a person has a poor diet (over or undereating,) they won’t consume the nutrients they need to sustain themselves efficiently. This can lead to a lack of energy and inactiveness. Over and undereating can cause heart problems and even death. However, good diet can lead to positive health behaviours such as exercising and socialising. A good diet can lead to weight loss which can boost confidence and make a person happier.
Finally, culture is another factor that influences health behaviours is. Culture tends to shape a person before they experience the world through school. A child will learn many behaviours from their parents both good and bad before other interactions. The child will have a support network through their culture and feel as though they belong. However, once they get out into the world they may feel different and isolated due to their culture. It can cause medical compromises, for example, a Jehovah’s witness refusing blood transfusions and choosing death over being saved, and a Muslim woman refusing a male health practitioner when the NHS is short staffed and may not be able to provide a female health practitioner. Circumcision and female genital mutilation is an extreme example of how culture can affect a person’s perceptions of positive health behaviours, when these perceptions may not be the best route for an individual to achieve long term health.
The health belief model was created in 1950, by social psychologists on behalf of the U.S. Public Health Service, to help understand the failure of people to adopt disease prevention strategies or screening tests for early detection of disease. It is used for the prevention and treatment of health behaviours based on the desire to avoid illness or to get well if already unwell, and the belief that a specific health action will help them. Within this model, whether an individual seeks help for a negative health behaviour or illness is largely dependent on that persons own perceptions of barriers and benefits. The health belief model has six constructs. These constructs are perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits, perceived barriers, cues to action and self-efficacy. A person who is being treated for the physical symptoms of drug addiction in the medical model would benefit from the health belief model because it would look deeper into their perceptions and help understand why they’re not partaking in positive health behaviours or wanting to beat addiction. Unfortunately, like the medical model, the health belief model does not consider habitual behaviours, social acceptability or any environmental or economic factors that may prohibit or promote recommended actions. This is when the social cognitive theory can help.
The social cognitive theory combines the cognitive learning theory (learning influenced by psychological factors) and behavioural learning theory (which assumes learning can be stimulated by the environment). They were combined to come up with four requirements for learning which are observation, retention, reproduction and motivation. It’s based on behavioural, environmental and cognitive influences, learning through conditioning and reinforcement by watching parents, carers and peers. This theory helps explain behaviours passed down in families and culturally which children learning without trial-and-error. It can be difficult to establish a faultless connection, because a child might learn something from a role model and not exhibit a behaviour for a long time, if at all. On the contrary they may never learn a behaviour through this theory. This theory evolved from the social learning theory into the social cognitive theory and self-efficacy theory that focuses on beliefs and influences on behaviour. Whilst this model is great for understanding why we behave as we do, based on our cognitive and environmental influences, and it can help treat a person through positive and negative reinforcement such as rewarding good behaviour and punishing bad behaviour, it doesn’t give an individual the chance to change themselves in a healthy way, like the cycle of change model can.
The cycle of change model has 6 stages. The six stages of the cycle of change model are pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance and relapse. This can help us understand why a person would start partaking in drug misuse. At the precontemplation stage a user would not take drugs. At the contemplation stage, they would begin to take drugs a couple of times based on curiosity but may not continue. Preparation would be occasional use of a drug within social circles. The action stage is frequent drug use (daily) but drug use does not impact the person’s ability to cope with everyday life. Once the drug use is maintained in the maintenance stage it can stop them from enjoying things, or taking part in usual hobbies they would enjoy. The relapse stage would be dependant use. The drug use becomes a need rather than a desire. They don’t want to stop because they either enjoy it or can’t live without it. This theory supports people through the stages of their health behaviour. It can support people to make a positive change or help understand a negative behaviours severity, but it cannot help treat a physical symptom like the medical model, and it doesn’t focus on the person’s attitudes or perception’s like the health belief model does, and it also misses out learned behaviours that are focused on in the social cognitive theory.
In some cases, one theory can be used to help treat a negative health behaviour, but in most cases, there are more than one element that needs to be addressed. Drug addiction is usually not simple enough to be treated by the medical model. Firstly, a cause needs to be established. Why are they taking drugs? A good way to answer this would be to use the social cognitive theory. Looking at learned behaviours and their environment. Secondly, the health belief model would help you get a better understanding of their perceptions of their drug problem and how likely they are to change. A treatment plan would need to be created by first establishing where they are in regards to their addition, where they are in regards to treating their addition and how they can be helped to begin or further their treatment. So, whilst all the models are useful in treating drug abuse problems and other things such as poor diet, it is unlikely due to the positive and negatives of each theory, that only one theory would be suited to manage and treat psychological health behaviours.
In conclusion, the medical model is very useful for many health professionals due to it having a stable structure and curing our symptoms quickly, but psychologically we need other models to help us learn, teach and cure problems that cannot be treated physically. The brain isn’t a machine like the framework of our body. There are chemical reactions and compounds that we don’t understand, but these models help us get a better understand of a person to help them overcome negative health behaviours and continue with positive health behaviours.