Applied Psychology Perspectives for Health & Social Care

by parisdiana (student)

Paris Diana Burns, 20044037, Unit 29 Peter Carlsson, Health and Social Care Level 3 Extended.

Within this assignment I will be extending my knowledge and understanding of the psychological perspectives and their application to all different health and social care sectors. I will be showing a great understanding of the specific behaviours such as it might be encountered within health and social care settings, the contribution of psychological perspectives to the management and treatment of all of these theories.

Explanation and treatment of behaviours

Within P2 I will be explaining psychological theories of anorexia nervosa and other Phobias. Also, I will be discussing different theories in relation to these behaviours and show how they are complementary or contrasting theories to one another. With these theories I am going to be choosing it from to explain phobia and anorexia with cognitive psychology, social learning theory and behaviourism.

Phobias

A phobia is an irrational and excessive fear of an object or situation. Fear is a form of anxiety that is triggered by a situation or an object. Every individual has a phobia of something; also to know what it’s like to be afraid in certain situations and change our behaviour accordingly.

For example-

There are three types of phobias:

Social phobias—fear of social situations.
Agoraphobia—fear of being trapped in an inescapable place or situation.
Specific phobias—fear of a specific object (such as snakes).

There are four major types of specific phobias:

The natural environment—fear of lightening, water, storms, etc.
Animal—fear of snakes, rodents, spiders, etc.
Medical—fear of seeing blood, receiving injections, visiting a doctor, etc.
Situational—fear of bridges, leaving the home, driving, etc.

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These are understandable responses to situations where we might be harmed. When there is a real threat, for example if you are about to be attacked, fear is a sensible and realistic response, and your body will release adrenaline and prepare for ‘fight or flight’.

Cognitive psychology shows that people that have a phobia may relate their fear with different life experiences from the past, people who have or have seen another individual have an experience that they also didn’t like then they may then develop a fear with that later on in life. If an individual see’s a situation happen, it would make them feel very uncomfortable, which would then make them fear the situation or develop a phobia for it. Piaget’s stages of development may show that anyone can develop phobias through any stages of development; this may be the cause of irrational phobia’s and behaviours towards the situations.

The behaviours of individuals shown that when they are being confronted with their phobia happens because they relate their fear of the situation with the danger that is due to the schema they have created about their fears of the situation. Cognitive theory has shown that depending on how an individual processes information and the information that they process effects their attitudes towards the situations and themselves.

With the cognitive theory, it’s best for any individual to get treatment through counselling. It will help any individual with a phobia to help overcome it slowly and gradually will not have a ...

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With the cognitive theory, it’s best for any individual to get treatment through counselling. It will help any individual with a phobia to help overcome it slowly and gradually will not have a fear of the object or situation. For instance, an individual might have a fear/phobia of heights, they counsellor would start off with showing a picture of a plane and would gradually build up to them sitting on a plane and would then be able to help the individual to go abroad and to stop them fearing the height the plane is flying or being near any height at all.

Social Learning Theory explains the origins of all of the phobias and to help explain why people may then develop these phobias and fears of certain situations or objects. This theory can be used to treat phobias; the best technique is for a therapist to model a new kind of behaviour before asking the individual with the phobia to perform it to them. It happens to be that most people would have these phobias because other individuals around them might have experienced a bad situation in the past that could be in relation to their phobias.

The individual would have a certain person as their role model, if it was a family member of someone that they know in person then they could go to them for advice and support for their phobias. The same as any other theory, counselling is the best option for any individual because they are getting professional help that can definitely benefiting them on their behalf’s. With treatment from the role model will enlighten the individual more rather than just a peer or another member of the family. The role model would be able to help the individual not to be feared of their certain phobia because if the role model isn’t then the individual wouldn’t because they want to be the same as the role model and look up to the individual.

Behaviourism has a good relation to phobias as most individuals may be conditioned to believe that what kind of a phobia they may have is a danger to them. This theory suggests that most phobias’ can be overcome through a reward, negative reward and punishment. Giving an individual a reward when they have overcome their phobia and taken to it well, with negative responses and not being rewarded would occur when something unpleasant had been removed due to their behaviours. Finally punishment would occur when something had been taken away due to the individual’s behaviour.

For example-

“A young boy has a phobia of sheep, they went on a school trip to Wales and overcome his phobia of them and got treated with a reward from his teacher.”
“A young boy reacted unpleasantly to the response of his phobia of sheep and due to this; he had been removed from the trip because of his desired behaviour.”
“A young boy had reacted to his phobia of sheep whilst on a trip with the school, because he had reacted to the phobia, the teacher would take something that he enjoys away from him, to make him learn and to help fight against his phobia of sheep.”

By using the rewarding scheme is a good technique for anyone that has a phobia of an object or situation. This is probably one of the best treatments to cure a phobia of an individual, like the example above. This can be done by either a family member, counsellor or teacher/work colleague, they would use the scheme to help the individual overcome the phobia because the more that they get rewarded the more they notice they are doing the right thing and they will overcome the fear.

Anorexia Nervosa

Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder and mental health condition which can be life-threatening. People with anorexia try to keep their weight as low as possible, usually by restricting the amount of food they eat. They often have a distorted image of themselves, thinking that they're fat when they're not.

Some people with the condition also exercise excessively, and some eat a lot of food in a short space of time and then make themselves sick or use laxatives. People affected by anorexia also go to great attempts to hide their behaviour from family and friends by lying about eating and what they have eaten, or by pretending to have eaten earlier.

Behaviourism comes in really well with anorexia by using operant conditioning, by using the rewarding scheme, by the individual’s behaviour to their issues. It depends on the environment that the individual is placed in, but when the individual is at home, a family member can help with using this technique to help them overcome the health condition.

Some individuals would get bullied through their body built so they would stop eating which classifies them as anorexic, so that their behaviours change and they become weakened. For example, a young individual in high school, throughout her high school life she had been bullied, so when a teacher had rewarded her through chocolate, she rejected it. The teachers had noticed that she wasn’t eating her food that had been brought from home, this had made them worry that she was not eating at all.

Every time she would go to eat something, other peers would begin to bully her, but if she didn’t eat anything then people than begun to worry about the individual because she wasn’t eating. This is connected to negative reward because as she didn’t eat the other peers then begun to leave alone.

When using the rewarding scheme it could be used as a good treatment to help an individual to eat properly. With professional help it could help the individual obtain the right amount of food. Also, with professional help they could give the individual counselling to ignore the bullying with other peers to help obtain a healthy lifestyle and higher their self-esteem.

Within the Social Learning Theory most individuals have a certain role model and would like to be exactly like them, most of these role models are known to be through the media. With anorexia, the individual would compare themselves with an actor/actress who could have been through television, magazines etc...

When you have a certain role model, you want to be exactly like them. For example, an individual had brought a magazine and Victoria Beckham was on the front cover, this individual would look at her body and wishes they were them. This would then make them feel envy for them, and they would then begin to starve themselves to have the body of their perfect role model.

Learning from the right people can help treat how the individual is to themselves. Getting professional help can help any individual with the causes of bullying; it’s best for the individual to talk to the person that they see as a “role model” or get their opinions on the situation to help them. It’s difficult with certain role models, because it could mean that the individual might not know the person if it’s someone famous and they might not want to follow any other person’s instructions of how they would like them to be.

Cognitive Theory

Cognitive theories of eating disorders as they are usually applied in treatment. More recent contributions and theory that is not widely applied are also reviewed. A set of hypotheses is derived from these theories and evidence for the validity of each hypothesis that are discussed; these include evidences from treatment studies, questionnaire studies and from experimental psychology. Following review of existing evidence, the paper summarises the current status of cognitive theory in eating disorders.

It then considers ways in which theory and research could be developed in order to improve and extend our understanding of cognitive content and processes in eating disorders. Limitations of existing models are highlighted and gaps in our knowledge, including knowledge of variables that typically have a central role in cognitive theory, are identified.

Further strategies to test the hypotheses derived from the theory are suggested, together with strategies that might extend existing theory. It is concluded that much further research is needed, both to test the validity of existing theoretical contributions and to extend the theory so it will be more useful in clinical practice.

This would affect any person, if they got picked on from what they ate or because of their weight, this would then stop most people from eating in front of people, or eating altogether. Bullying because of someone’s weight can cause an individual to become anorexic and by messing with the individuals schemas.

Counselling is the best form of treatment for any individual when it comes to the cognitive theory, because through counselling they can give the individual the right information of their anorexia and give them the benefit that they aren’t what they are. With anorexia the individual thinks that they are overweight or that they need to lose weight, with professional counselling they can help the individual to see their real self and to try and higher their self-esteem and make them realise that they do have a problem that can be resolved.