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Date Submitted: 12/02/2012 11:57 AM
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...