Health and Wellbeing

Health Psychology is a discipline studying people's health behaviours whether that be at a primary, secondary or tertiary level. Psychologists engage in research and intervention development aimed to promote positive health behaviours such as exercise uptake and to support people suffering from any type of chronic illness. We are interested in how people respond to health promotion advice and once given a diagnosis how they behave in relation to their illness. We have a strong research base which helps us to design and deliver interventions to support people to remain healthy and to cope with their illness as effectively as possible.

The BioPsychoSocial approach is a holistic approach to understanding physical illness and people's responses to it. For example, people can be given a diagnosis, have their illness explained to them in medical terms, but still not adhere to their treatment. The 'psychosocial' element of the approach helps us to understand, in this example, why non-adherence may be occurring. Taking a multi-faceted approach to understanding patients and their illness enables us as practitioners to better intervene and to improve patient's quality of life and wellbeing.

'Wellbeing' as a concept is now very much at the forefront of the government's agenda. An aging population and an increase in chronic illness have driven this agenda in terms of improving public health and its associated benefits including reducing usage of NHS services and a healthier, productive workforce. Health behaviours play a signficant role in the successful management or mis-management of chronic illness. For example, increasing exercise alone can significantly improve health outcomes. Recent reviews of the literature into health and wellbeing suggest that organisations can have a significant role to play in enabling people to remain at work by providing health and wellbeing programmes to encourage positive health behaviours. Programme content can range from psychotherapy to provision of pedometers.