Health Psychology 6 marks questions answered

1. Consider what the ethics are concerned with health promotions.

Firstly, one ethic that is concerned with health promotions is the protection of viewers/readers as some campaigns may include a message too strong for a certain age group or that might trigger people because of their life experiences. Health promotions, if they are displayed on TV, should always try to limit powerful messages at times when children are not watching TV e.g. evening or around school times. Also, campaigns with triggering messages or upsetting images could have warnings, so that people will be prepared to watch these, which is supported by Geer and Maisel (1972), who proposed the idea that if people have control over their decisions, they are less likely to be affected by them.

Secondly, another ethic that is concerned with health promotion is privacy because people might feel their lives are being disrupted or invaded by campaigns promoting a certain kind of lifestyle. This might have negative long-term effects on people, such as anxiety or depression if they are submitted to the constant repeat of how they are not treating themselves good enough. Also, this process might be upsetting for people in certain financial status, who cannot afford a better lifestyle. Therefore, telling people what to do is unethical because everyone is individual and different people have different needs.

 

2. Describe what advice psychologists could give to Habacuc about measuring adherence to medical requests objectively in his patients.

Psychologists would give different pieces of advice to Habacuc on how to measure adherence objectively, such as pill counting, biochemical tests and repeat prescriptions.

Firstly, Chun and Naya (2000) developed a medical dispenser, which could be a good method to find out if Habacuc’s patients are taking the medicine he prescribes because it would record the date and time the pill bottle was used. Also, it was found out that the adherence rate was at 71%, meaning that the method is valid. However, there may be problems with guaranteeing that the patients actually took the medicines.

Secondly, Roth (1987) developed the use of biochemical tests (urine and blood), which would be useful for Habacuc because they detect the levels of the drug intake and are very reliable since they use scientific methods. However, it may be difficult to find out if the patients took the right dose at the right time.

Thirdly, Sherman et Al (2002) developed the idea of repeat prescriptions for patients on long-term treatment, which could be good for Habacuc’s patients since recovering from heart surgery may take a while. Also, by using this method Habacuc could measure adherence more reliably since patients are not likely to pick up their medicines if they don’t consume them. However, there may be problems to assess adherence if carers or family members pick up the prescriptions for the patients as the drugs may not be consumed.

3. Describe how Jane could assess pain in children.

Jane could asses pain in chidren by using the Paediatric Pain Questionnaire designed by Thompson and Varni, which is a simpler version of the McGill questionnaire and includes similar tasks.

Firstly, the children need to describe the pain in their own words, so that Jane can interpret their feelings and little language barrier is created.

Secondly, the children will need to choose as many adjectives as they want to describe their pain, which would allow Jane to narrow the symptoms down further from their earlier description. Also, a visual analogue scale from 1 to 10 with faces would need to be completed to decide how reliable the first two descriptions were.

Thirdly, they need to mark the place of their pain on a picture of a child’s body, which would help Jane make a diagnosis and prescribe the right treatment.