Summary: Psychology Of Illness

Read the summary and the most important questions on Psychology of Illness

• Stress & Illness

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• What kind of changes does stress involve? (4 points)

  Biochemical, physiological, behavioural and psychological changes

• What does stress (fight or flight response) activate?

  
  Stress (fight or flight response) activates various hormonal changes e.g. cortisol is released into the bloodstream, releasing adrenaline --> think HPA axis
  - The release of these biochemicals may have long-term detrimental effects

• What is the stress-illness indirect pathway?

  
  Stress might affect people’s smoking/drinking/eating habits which in turn may make people become ill

• What are the 3 main direct pathways in which stress may increase someone’s risk of disease?

  1. Stress causes increased heart rate and blood pressure = increased risk of disease
  2. Impact of stress hormones on immune processes - corticosteroid suppresses immune system = increased risk of disease
  3. Stress causes disturbance of the digestive system = increased risk of disease

• What is the fight of flight mechanism?

  
  The hypothalamus signals the adrenal glands to produce adrenaline when there is a stressor

• Stress affects adrenaline. What does this then cause?

  
  Stress effects adrenaline = which effects blood pressure = cardiovascular disease
  --> chain reaction

• What did Matthews et al. (2004) investigate? What did they find?

  
  Sample of 4000 people; longitudinal study of 30 years
  
  Method: Examined how a stressful task affected participants' blood pressure
  
  Results: found that those people who had a larger change on blood pressure were more likely to have hypertension 30 years later
  i.e. Young adults who show a large BP response to psychological stress may be at risk for hypertension  
  
  = potential causal chain of effects that may cause a risk of high blood pressure in later life
  
  (Hypertension = to do with high blood pressure)  
  
  Paper: http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/110/1/74.full

• What did Tawakol et al. (2017) investigate? What did they find?

  
  Looked at relationships between patients and amygdala activity
  – they examined whether amygdala activity had a causal effect on cardiovascular disease
  - Used PET scan
  - Looked at bone marrow, spline activity, inflammation of arteries
  - Follow up 4 years later to see who had developed cardiovascular disease
  
  Results = link between higher amygdala activity and cardiovascular disease 4 years later = amygdala increases bone marrow and white blood cells
  
  Conc: emotional stressors can lead to cardiovascular disease through amygdalar activity 
  
  
  Amygdala = related to anxiety, fear, and stress response     

• How can stress affect gastrointestinal disorders?

  • Stress can inhibit gastric emptying (emptying of the stomach) and stimulate colonic motor function (Tache et al., 2001)
    

  
  
  

  • IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) may be triggered by the immune system which is affected by stress (Giovanni et al., 2011)

  - colonic motor function = links to IBS = may link to stress

• What did Segerstrom & Miller (2004) investigate? What did they find?

  
  Meta-analysis of articles describing a relationship between stress and parameters of the immune system
  
  (see slide 11 + notes on slide 11)
  READ THIS PAPER: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361287/