Hanna Wilson
Psychology History and Systems
Chapter 18
Health Psychology
Chapter eighteen starts with the question of whether or not applied psychology uses scientific knowledge to better the human condition or if it is misused for selfish goals. Obviously not all parts of applied psychology are going to be used for good. Many will take for granted what we have learned from applied psychology research and use it to better themselves and their own goals. Aside from the portion of people who misuse such scientific evidence, applied psychology has been beneficial for humans as a whole in many different ways.
I’d like to focus on how applied psychology has been beneficial to the health field because health psychology is an interest of mine. One observation I found very interesting is how the disruption of social ties and physical and psychological illness are related. Hunt describes how researchers have found evidence that depression and an associated weakening of immune response are more common among divorced and widowed people than married ones. The solution recommended by psychologists is social support which has shown to moderate the vulnerability to stress. This principle provides great insight when trying to help people suffering from depression or weakening immune responses. Knowing how outside factors such as the economy, society, and social ties are connected to someones health is critical in trying to help someone recover from mental of physical illness. The example Hunt provides is only one small way health psychology has been used to better people's lives.
Aside from the example above, there are many other issues in the health field that have been advanced by psychology and have benefited humans as a whole. Other fields like education, human engineering, environmental and many more also use applied psychology. Despite the small portion of people whose objective is to use applied psychology for selfish purposes, without it humans would be worse off. I think Hunt does a very good job at showing the implications of how applied psychology, when used for the good of the people, is beneficial to humanity. 
Hi Hanna,
ReplyDeleteI would like to say this was a very insightful reflection about chapter 18 as I think the health and educational field of psychology focused here are relevant to our unfortunate situation the world is experiencing. The irony of this pandemic is that while the author explains that socializing can alleviate the severity of certain illnesses or negative mental states (depression) in the chapter, we cannot do so in this time in order to keep people safe from each other. I have experienced the withdrawals of social interactions taking a toll on my mental health and in learning too and try my best to keep myself connected with friends and completing my courses, thus I believe health psychology right now needs to be more prioritized in keeping us feel intact. For the learning psychology, I am in my clinical practice I semester and was going to my observations in a general classroom before this pandemic unfolded. However, I have been keeping in contact with the teacher I was placed with about her students'adjustments to online learning. The biggest takeaway from all of this is that from depriving the students of the socialization with their peers and one on one learning they receive from their teachers, they are not doing well on their own at home. It is concerning because of how limited the students are to technological resources as well as contact with the teacher in understanding lesson content. I feel if teachers apply more understanding about health and educational psychology during these hard times to their students, then we may not feel so alone and helpless as many of us are currently experiencing.
Hey Hanna, great post I agree with you that that health psychology is very important especially now with the Covid-19 crisis. Applied psychology is being used in all aspects of human life, in the health field, education field, engineering field, and the criminal justice field just to name a few. I also think that a lot of the progress that we were able to obtain was because how the world is so united now. I feel like globalization is a key factor in enhancing and improving human engineering in all fields. That is because we are able to share data and research together and help parties that need help. Nonetheless, in the education field, we have developed ways to help children with learning disabilities or handicapped conditions. We are also working together to tackled the global warming/climate change issues, and in the engineering field we are continuously innovating new technologies. However of course some people misuse this and still conduct unethical experiments, create dangerous weapons and are willing to destroy the environment. However I believe that this is a trade off, just like security and freedom. Do we want to give up our freedom for security or keep our freedom but risk not being secure ? There is always a trade-off, that is life.
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