...Psychology of Health in the Workplace Psychology of Health in the Workplace Kristin Haimowitz HCA/250 January 22, 2012 Wakita R. Bradford Psychology of Health in the Workplace A good attitude can go a long way in making the place where you work a more tolerable place to be. Having a healthy lifestyle can make it easier to deal with the smaller problems that seem to happen on a day to day basis. Health psychology is concerned with understanding how biological, psychological, environmental, and cultural factors are involved in physical health and the prevention of illness. Due to recent advances in psychological, medical, and physiological research, it had lead to new ways of thinking about health and illness. This conceptualization, which has been labeled the biopsychosocial model, views health and illness as the product of a combination of factors including biological characteristics (e.g., genetic predisposition), behavioral factors (e.g., lifestyle, stress, health beliefs, and social conditions (e.g., cultural influences, family relationships, social support) (Marks, 2011). People have developed a field of health psychology that helps people deal with stressors that they are involved with at their workplace. Many experts perform research to help them solidify their findings. Occupational Health Psychology (OHP) has developed from these studies, and does research so that they can better understand the needs of people in their work settings. Also, OHP...
Words: 462 - Pages: 2
...various career opportunities in the field of psychology was conducted. In this paper three different professional psychology sub-specialties fields were explored by gathering information from various websites. The three sub-specialty fields discussed are an Experimental Psychology, Industrial/Organizational Psychology and Health Psychology. Experimental Psychology The experimental psychology field is one that conducts research in cognitive behaviors of humans and animals, neuroscience and personalities. The field does this research using the scientific method. The experimental psychologist work setting can widely range from college and universities, to government and facility based settings. The information gathered is used in a variety of ways, including therapeutic methods, work related production issues, employee wellness and even employee safety issues. The methods used for the research also vary depending on the area being studied. The models all follow scientific methodology, utilizing group settings, manipulating independent variables, collecting the data and then forming a hypothesis (APA, 2012). The education preparation and training for an experimental psychologist is usually focused on research and how to conduct this research. The minimum education needed is a master’s degree in general psychology or experimental psychology. To advance in research, certain schools/Universities or salary a doctorate degree in psychology is almost always required (APA, 2012). The...
Words: 1430 - Pages: 6
...Strategies for increasing supervisors’ personal power through informal channels Who’s the boss? White paper | 4.10.12 Emily Durham Contents Executive summary Personal biography The effects of power within organisations Sources of organisational power Developing the personal power of supervisors Recruitment approaches Development approaches Minimising the drawbacks of organisational power Reference ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... 2 2 3 3 4 5 6 7 9 1 Emily Durham | Strategies for increasing supervisors’ personal power through informal channels Executive summary This paper highlights the influence of power within the workplace. Different sources of power are discussed, as well as the consequences of having employees who possess more informal power than their supervisors. Recommendations are made to increase supervisors’ levels of personal power, which can be implemented at both the recruitment stage and through development of supervisors. Personal biography Emily Durham has a BA, majoring in Psychology and English, and is currently working towards gaining a BA (Hons) with a focus in Industrial, Work and Organisational Psychology. 2 Emily Durham | Strategies for increasing supervisors’ personal power through informal channels The effects of power within organisations Power can be defined as the ability to overcome adversity in the attempt to influence others’ behaviour and opinions, with the intention of obtaining...
Words: 2536 - Pages: 11
...Adult Depression and BPS Name University Professor Unit Date Discuss BPS factors contributing to depression in adulthood, and BPS ways of managing it The biopsychosocial model was first pioneered by a cardiologist by the name Dr. George Engel and has been embraced today by the mental health specialists. This model depicts that the biological, social factors and physiological factors are all vital and rely on each other to promote health or cause a disease. What affects the body will also often affect the mind. Wellness or a state of illness is not entirely based on an individual’s physical state but also on the person’s psychological and social status too. These elements that can contribute to depression in adulthood include; biological, psychological and social factors (Melchert, 2011). Biological factors can make one to be prone to depression in adulthood. This is the reason because some people are more susceptible to depression as compared to others because of their biological factors and their hereditary genes which put them at a higher chance of becoming depressed in the future. Children also can inherit depression symptoms from their parents. Psychological factors are also part of the BPS model (Melchert, 2011). The factors that influence depression include poor coping skills, impaired emotional intelligence and judgment problems. The symptoms can occur as a result of past experiences of being subjected to numerous negative life events or life stress...
Words: 905 - Pages: 4
...Discussion on how theory and research in health psychology has been helpful or unhelpful in addressing human problems. Areas important in health psychology involve studies of behaviour which courses illness and also a way to try motivate individuals to leave healthy with the influence from hospitals and care professionals in the society. ‘Health psychology is the aggregate of the specific educational, scientific and professional contribution of the discipline of psychology to the promotion and maintenance of health, the prevention and treatment of illnesses’ Matarazzo (1980). As health psychology is widely related to health the definition of healthy is by the World Health Organization (WHO) 1948 saying that health is ‘the state of complete physical, social and spiritual well-being, not simply the absences of illnesses’. As psychology is the science of behaviour and change; psychologists have helped to influence change in people’s life. As health psychology is interested mainly in health and health maintenance rather than on diseases and disease prevention. It was found in the 1970s when many countries (western) began to suffer from diseases and death in result to declining expenditures, to resolve the situation health promotion strategies were introduced. As there are many factors that courses diseases for example smoking which leads to diseases like cardiovascular disease, to investigate the relationship between health behaviours, health and disease outcomes studies would be...
Words: 1854 - Pages: 8
...Access to higher education Psychology assignment (karon Chewter 7nd March 2016) Psychology applied to health Health psychology is the study of health, illnessillness, and health care practice. Health psychology as a unique area of psychology came to the forefront in the 1970s and has since grown. (Gross.R 2005) Health psychology is an exciting and relatively new field devoted to understanding psychological influences on how people stay healthy, why they become ill and how they respond when they do get ill? It focuses on health promotion and maintenance, prevention and treatment of illness and the understanding of the biopsychosocial aspects of physical and mental illness, improvement of the health care system and the formulation of health policy (S.E, Taylor, 1995). The main areas of health psychology are stress and coping, health behaviours and issues in health. Health psychologists study such issues and develop interventions to help people stay well or get over illness. For exampleexample, a health psychology researcher might be interested in why adolescents continue to binge drink even though they know that binge drinking increases their risk of cancer and heart disease. Understanding this poor health habit leads to interventions to help adolescents stop binge drinking. The waysways, in which health psychologists try to change the behaviours, the influence of behaviourist such as Skinner and Watson will...
Words: 1501 - Pages: 7
...to provide a healing presence. According to Koerner “western medicine traditionally conceptualized the body as a grand machine controlled by the brain and central nervous system” (Koerner, J.G. 2011). In a sense a living computer! “Physiologic and psychologic behaviors were considered dependent on structure and hardware of the brain and body” (Koerner, J.G. 2011). Healthcare and how we take care of people have changed over the years with the different advancements in medicine and psychology. Health and healing is not only seen as physical but also includes mind, spirit and biopsychosocial including cultural factors. These aspects helped shape the different modalities of how we take care of patients. Larry Dossey has described three different models of health and healing. Era I according to Dossey is the Mechanical Era, in this Era health and healing was considered to be more physical in nature. Healers believed that a person’s health was determined by physical factors. Era II not only was health and healing influenced by physical aspects but also by feeling and...
Words: 3917 - Pages: 16
...Psychology Stress And Health Stress and Health Psychology Andrew Arnold March 25, 2010 Ever wonder about how stress affects our bodies and our health? This word stress is thrown around by the media so much it’s losing its meaning but have you ever wondered how they define stress? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines stress as a physical, chemical, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension and may be a factor in disease causation. Our text book defines stress as the term used to describe the physical, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses to events that are appraised as threatening or challenging. Stress-causing events are called stressors, they can come from external sources or from within us and can scale from relatively mild to quite serious. There are things, events, and conflicts that cause people to “stress-out.” These are called stressors. Stressors can be anything from something small, like being stuck in traffic during rush hour or something big like an earthquake or hurricane. Stressors can also be imaginary, such as financial stress such as, where the next mortgage payment will come from. There are two kinds of stressors, one is distress which is the bad stress and eustress which is the good stress that motivates us as people to do well. There are certain environmental factors that can affect our stress levels and sometimes we cannot control the outcome of these events, these are basic ups and downs of life. An example...
Words: 454 - Pages: 2
...Running head: OCCUPATIONAL STRESS AFFECTS MENTAL HEALTH How occupational stress affects mental health Dayana Fornaris Florida National College April 15, 2011 Abstract This research paper gives us a brief idea about how occupational stress affects mental health. It describes how occupational stress has become a serious health issue, not just in terms of an individual’s mental and physical well being, but also for employers as well who had begin to feel the financial consequences of work stress. Occupational stress can be defined as the harmful physical and emotional responses that occur when the requirements of the job do not match the capabilities of the worker. However, occupational stress can be an extremely difficult construct to define. There are certain factors that contribute to work stress like for example working long hours beyond your control; Finding it hard to say no to a task for fear of losing future work, frustration and feeling undervalued at work. This can lead to stress and tension. How occupational stress affects mental health Stress has been defined in a number of ways and the range of stress management techniques is even wider still. Essentially what most people understand by 'stress' is a physiological or psychological response to external stressors that goes beyond what is accepted as normal. Maybe 'strain' would have been a better word. Limited external stresses produce a response, a 'strain’, which...
Words: 1303 - Pages: 6
.... If there is a change in the Subject/Title/Supervisor/Co-supervisor of the ongoing thesis, please use other relevant forms. Please fill in the form completely and submit the Printed Copy, which has the approval of the Department Chair to the Institute of Graduate Studies and Research (IGSR). Incomplete application forms will be returned to the Department. The Institute of Graduate Studies and Research will finalize the application. Part I. Student & Thesis Information [To be completed by the Supervisor] |Student No | | | |Student Name and|Rita Anumbose Nkendong of stressors in the workplace. Dysfunctional customer behaviors are among| | |these stressors (Boyd, 2002). Since frontline employees have intense face-to-face or voice-to-voice interactions with customers, | | |they seem to be faced with aggressive behaviors of customers (Karatepe, Yorganci, & Haktanir, 2009). | | |Customer-related social stressors are composed of four dimensions: disproportionate customer expectations, customer verbal | | |aggression, disliked customers, and ambiguous customer expectations (Dormann & Zapf, 2004). Disproportionate customer | | |expectations refer to “situations in which customers tax or challenge the service that they want to receive from the service | ...
Words: 1923 - Pages: 8
...Anytime a person is met with a stressor, any environmental demand that may create stress, rapid changes are sent forward throughout the body. Almost every system in the body is preparing itself to encounter any danger that may be perceived. (Human Diseases and Conditions. n.d.) There are many instances where these stress responses in short-term bursts, or acute stress, can actually be beneficial to a person. Examples include the adrenaline rush one may get when confronted with danger, a person being able to produce better material under an approaching deadline, or any other event that may evoke a “fight or flight” response. However, studies show that long-term, or chronic stress can be detrimental to the human body and may lead to serious health consequences. This relationship between physical illness and stress has been an area of interest dating as far back...
Words: 1382 - Pages: 6
...the “father of stress research” (1936), defined stress as “the nonspecific response of the body to any demand placed upon it”. Researchers continue to struggle today in an effort to agree on exactly what is stress and how it can be measured (AIS, 1979). Stress is a word that comes from the Latin word stringere meaning to draw tight, Cannon (1929) defined stress in terms of the internal physiological state of subjects exposed to threatening or exciting situations, e.g. the raised adrenaline secretion that can be observed in the well-known ‘fight or flight’ reaction (Arnorld and Randall et al., 2010) For several decades, occupational health researchers have been concerned with factors at work that may cause stress (Innstrand et al., 2012). Work-related stress and work pressure draw attention of many researchers due to the increase in illness and health issues derived from work. Moreover, an interest in examination of the differences in psychological symptoms and the variation in the reaction relative to the gender was demonstrated. Depression, anxiety, panic, loss of confidence, change in emotional reaction and more are known as psychological driving factors of work-related stress. In order to analyse the dimension...
Words: 2380 - Pages: 10
...Developing Country Studies ISSN 2224-607X (Paper) ISSN 2225-0565 (Online) Vol 2, No.9, 2012 www.iiste.org Impact of Health and Safety Management on Employee Safety at the Ghana Ports and Harbour Authority Ruby Melody Agbola ⃰ Department of Management, Central University College. P.O. Box 2305, Tema, Ghana * E-mail of the corresponding author: rubyagbola@yahoo.co.uk Abstract The Ghana Ports and Harbour Authority (GPHA) has been plagued with series of fatal accidents and catastrophes claiming the lives of many employees in recent years. The purpose of this study is to examine the Safety and Health Management Systems (SHMS) implemented by the GPHA, assess the effectiveness of these measures in reducing accidents and death; and evaluate the impact of accidents and work-related illnesses on the employee safety at work. The results reveal an organisation fraught with poor health and safety management practices, poor training in safety know-how, lack of information on dangerous chemicals and hazardous materials, lack of monitoring and enforcement of safety rules, unavailability of essential safety equipments, with adverse effects on employees and the organisational performance. GPHA must increase education and create awareness of the importance of health and safety, ensure collection and storage of data for effective monitoring and evaluation of safety performance. Keywords: Ghana, Ports, Harbour, Safety, Health 1. Introduction The health and safety (H&S) of employees is a very significant...
Words: 7529 - Pages: 31
...conducted on the topic, “Employee Health and Safety”. Under this topic we have managed to cover many aspects of employee protection. This chapter contains the introduction to the research conducted, the basic research objectives and the importance and logical basis of the study carried out. 1. INTRODUCTION Employee Health and Safety is a very vast topic that comes under human resource management and is a very important one at the same time. Every organization now a days is looking forward to make more and more improvements in this sector if human resource development in order to be more competitive. This research paper has some excellent information from very well known resources on the required topic and is thought to provide very useful information and facts to the reader. 2. RESEARCH OBJECTIVES • To develop and implement appropriate environmental, health and safety programs, and activities associated with those programs • To make aware, to ensure the adherence to health and safety policies and practices applicable to the instruction, research and work environment in which the employees participate. • To promote personal security and overall safety Programs • To promote a safe and healthy workplace while encouraging proactive stewardship on behalf of the environment. • To empower employees to effectively manage their health and well-being. Train, and require individuals to take personal responsibility for safety, health, and the environment. • Aim to...
Words: 9393 - Pages: 38
...ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION IN THE WORK PLACE PART I – SECTION I - REFERENCE LIST Search Strategy To facilitate my search criteria, I sought the use of various search engines such as Google scholars, Bing, ProQuest and Academic OneFile. In order to identify what I was meant to research and comprehend, I used certain keywords and certain phrases which are relevant to the topic I picked. The following are the keywords that I picked for search purpose • Causes of anxiety in workplace • Workplace depression • Effect of Alcohol and drug dependence on workplace • Anxiety and work environment • Boredom in job • Stress in workplace • organizational commitment & employee discontent • Physical fitness and work related issues • Dealing with Anxiety and Depression • Coping with Anxiety and Depression • Impact of anxiety and depression on organization and economy I had analyzed the various key words which are related to the topic and compared sourced information from other related sites for the topic. To find how organizations deal with anxiety and depression and how this affects other employees I initiated discussions with the human resource dept and the different chiefs of the company that I work, namely Gulf Cement Co. The Preliminary research question that I will be addressing in the literature review What are the effects of anxiety and depression in the work place and how organizations deal with it? A list of 6 – 8 Keywords and their definitions...
Words: 5534 - Pages: 23
