Think Yourself Healthy? Health Psychology Investigates

How the mind interacts with the body to create physical well-being and psychological well-being is an on-going point of discussion and research. If you enjoy learning about the mind, you may enjoy a health psychology career.

Health Psychology

Health psychology is more than just how the mind creates a sense of health. It focuses on understanding how biological, social, and behavioral factors affect health and illness. It is a term often used interchangeably with "behavioral medicine" or "medical psychology." This is a very analytical field, and if you want to pursue a psychology career, you should be comfortable with scientific practices like making hypotheses, collecting data, and performing experiments.

Under the umbrella of clinical psychology, health psychology allows you to work with a range of professionals in dentistry, dietary, social work, and traditional medicine. A health psychologist conducts research and offers treatment services. In this psychology career, you can help patients achieve health goals like quitting smoking or losing weight.

Cutting Edge Psychology

Health psychologists study the effect of psychological, social and cultural factors on some of the following disease processes:

• Diabetes
• Cancer
• Hypertension and coronary artery disease
• Chronic pain
• Sleep disorders

The research in health psychology tries to identify the source and growth of the illness along with how people cope with and reduce stress and pain. Health psychologists try to measure a range of social, behavioral, and biological factors to collect meaningful data about the interactions. From these conclusions, health psychologists can develop better health maintenance programs for patients.

Distance Degree Starts Your Education

If you want to go into the field of health psychology, you need to be as educated as possible. Anyone going into this side of a clinical psychology career will need to earn a doctoral degree as most jobs require it. Getting your bachelor degree from campus schooling or distance education is a crucial first step in starting a healthy psychology career. After getting your education, you will be able to help your patients gain healthy lives.

Sources:
http://www.health-psych.org/whatis.html
http://www.health-psych.org/edu.htm
http://bls.gov/oco/ocos056.htm

About the Author
James Tolles is the Managing Editor for HQ Publications. He helped write and edit the successful application for Sparks, NV that earned the city honors as a 2004 All-America City Finalist-a title held by only 30 cities in the nation. He is also a freelance writer. He attended a four year liberal arts college and holds two B.A. degrees, one in Creative Writing and the other in History.