Health Psychology Final

Unit 9 Final Project Case Study

Nicole Sanchez

PS370: Health Psychology

Professor Elizabeth Smith Clark

Kaplan University

October 2, 2012

Health psychology consists of the mind and body working together to contribute to the wellbeing of a person. In choosing case study number one I: John, I will be discussing the effects of stress and alcoholism to a person’s wellbeing as well as different support and therapeutic techniques that can help with stress and treat alcoholism.

Case Study: John

John is suffering from alcoholic hepatitis due to excessive drinking. He is having severe stomach problems and has been exhibiting moodiness, sleep deprivation, weight loss and lack of energy. Along with alcoholism, John is suffering from stress due to the possibility of his wife leaving him and his job being on the line.

Evaluation of models behavior

According to the case study John has multiple health issues that the doctor cannot explain from a physical point of view. His medical problems can be explored by understanding what psychosomatic medicine (the mind body relationship) is. According to Friedman (2002) “a significant proportion of patient complaints (at least 25 percent) made to physicians are psychological in nature and have no significant physical counterpart.”(pg. 80) Patients, like John, exhibit symptoms from tension (caused by an unhappy marriage) such as headaches, pain, or weakness and no physical explanation can be found because the problems are somatization. (Friedman, 2002) Somatization is symptoms that have no known medical explanation and are affected by psychological processes. (Friedman, 2002) John’s stressors at the moment consist of his failing marriage, debt and the possible loss of his job.

The first type of behavior model is the illness behavior (sick role) model. Friedman (2002) describes this model as someone who responds to certain situations by entering the sick mode “by oversleeping, being lethargic, drinking alcohol, staying...