Health Psychology

Catalog description

This course is an introduction to health psychology. Health psychology brings the corpus of psychological knowledge to bear on understanding physical health. Many prevalent diseases are under the control of the individual both in terms of risk behaviors elevating the probability of disease and with respect to adherence to health promoting behaviors or treatment regimens that aim to control, reduce, or eliminate the disease cause agents. Health psychology is concerned with understanding the psycho, behavioral factors that explain physical disease. It also focuses on designing, implementing, and evaluating preventive interventions to reduce or eliminate the behaviors that place the individual at risk for poor health.