PSY-225 introduces students to the field of health psychology through an exploration of ways in which the biopsychosocial (holistic) model is applied to promote health and improve coping with illness. PSY-225 requires PSY-108 as a prerequisite, connecting foundational psychology to the genuine intersection of mental and physical health.
The biopsychosocial model as a genuinely holistic framework
The course's central biopsychosocial model treats health as genuinely shaped by biological, psychological, and social factors together, rejecting a purely biomedical view that reduces health to biological processes alone.
Coping with illness as a genuine psychological skill
PSY-225 explicitly addresses improving coping with illness, treating psychological coping strategies as a genuine, learnable dimension of managing health challenges, not incidental to purely medical treatment.
Key topics in PSY225
- The biopsychosocial (holistic) health model
- Health promotion strategies
- Coping with illness
- Psychological factors in physical health
- Social influences on health behavior
- Mind-body health connections
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Worked example: three factors shaping one health outcome
- Purely biomedical view: Explaining a chronic illness outcome through biological factors alone
- PSY-225's biopsychosocial approach: Examining how biological, psychological, and social factors together shape that same health outcome
- Lesson: PSY-225 teaches that genuine health psychology requires this holistic view, not a purely biomedical explanation
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Frequently asked questions
Health outcomes and illness experiences are genuinely shaped by psychological factors like stress and coping style, and social factors like support systems and socioeconomic circumstances, in addition to purely biological processes — a purely biomedical view that ignores these dimensions would miss genuinely significant influences on real health outcomes. PSY-225 uses the biopsychosocial model because it captures this genuine complexity, rather than reducing health to biology alone.
How a person psychologically copes with illness — their coping strategies, mindset, and social support utilization — genuinely affects their health outcomes and quality of life independent of the medical treatment itself, meaning coping is a distinct, addressable psychological dimension of illness management. PSY-225 treats coping as its own genuine skill area because psychological intervention in this domain has real, demonstrated value for health outcomes, not merely incidental to medical care.