Contributions of psychology to health research: Patterns, problems, and potentials.

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed growing attention by the public, by professionals, and by all levels of government to issues and problems arising from increasing costs and deficiencies in delivery of health care services. National concern has been reflected in the drafting of federal legislation to provide a national health insurance plan. Health professionals have been increasingly concerned with manpower shortages, training and accreditation standards, provision of continuing education, and recently, in response to federal legislation, with establishing peer review systems to assure quality of service. Public concern is reflected in the consumer advocacy movement and increased representation of consumers on the boards and committees of health agencies. The Task Force on Health Research was established by APA's Board of Scientific Affairs to survey the nature and extent of contributions by psychologists to basic and applied research on behavioral factors in physical illness and health miintenance. A survey and analysis of the research literature was made.Psychologists active in health research have been identified, together with their areas of interest. Funding resources for behavioral science research on health and illness have been identified. Areas of neglect have been pointed up, together with the special training needs for the "health care" researcher.

A Framework for Understanding the Role of Psychological Processes in Disease Development, Maintenance, and Treatment: The 3P-Disease Model

“…Scientific and technological advances in 1969 led to “giant leaps for mankind,” including the publication of a paper applying psychological principles to health services (Schofield, 1969). Over the next several years, the American Psychological Association (APA) established a task force to explicate the role of behavior and psychology in health-related processes, systems, and diseases (APA Task Force on Health Research, 1976). As a result, health psychology and behavioral medicine were established as unique fields of study (Wallston, 1996).…”

The Status of the “Biopsychosocial” Model in Health Psychology: Towards an Integrated Approach and a Critique of Cultural Conceptions

“…Health psychology emerged as a distinct subfield of psychology when the American Psychological Association's (APA) Task Force on Health Research was commissioned in 1976 to address concerns over increasing rates of "preventable" diseases in the United States [1]. During a fifty year span between 1920 and 1970, the prevalence of acute infectious diseases like influenza, measles, and tuberculosis declined in the North America while what have been termed "preventable" conditions have substantially increased, including cardiovascular disease, drug and alcohol abuse, and lung cancer [2].…”

“…This perspective yielded a shared set of assumptions (i.e., reductionism, naturalism, mind-body dualism), which relegated illness and healing primarily to a physiological framework with limited attention to social, moral or political dimensions. It is during this time in the late 1970s that psychiatrist George L. Engel at the University of Rochester, as well as other clinicians and researchers, began to enunciate the limitations of biomedicine and a need for a biopsychosocial perspective 1 . In 1977 George Engel observed a "medical crisis" that he thought "derives from adherence to a model of disease no longer adequate for the scientific tasks and social responsibilities of either medicine or psychiatry" (p. 129), and that medical practitioners and researchers "should take into account the patient, the social context, the physician's role and the health care system" (p. 132) [25].…”

“…Thus, it is proposed that a "holistic" perspective is required to guide future research and practice in health psychology and related medical fields, a perspective that several developmental psychopathologists and researchers refer to as a multilevel integrative analysis [22,[45][46][47][48]. 1 In 2009 Ghaemi observes that the "biopsychosocial" concept was actually coined by Roy Grinker in the 1950s. George Engel, however, is still largely responsible for its popularization in medical science and health psychology in his 1977 article [26].…”