Health and Psychology

Psychologists learn what to do in therapy as part of an educational process that includes doctoral level of study, internship, residency or post-doctoral fellowship, and passing of a licensure examination.  The Americal Psychological Association has an Ethics Code which serves to provide practitioners both an aspirational element for practice as well as enforceable rules to set the minimal standards under which practice is to take place.

Standards of care exist iin othe...

I had the opportunity to email a colleague about what I do, do consultation with a colleague about my practice and talk to a couple of attornies about my work.  Although the field of health psychology is now more than 40 years old, many psychologists and most of the general population doesn't know anything about the field.

Psychologists back in the 1960's and 1970's occasionally were able to work in hospitals with physicians providing psychological care to people underg...

The prevalence of anxiety or depression in people with physical illness ranges from estimates as low as 10% to as high as 70%.  When people continue to have physical symptoms and no diagnosis the rates rise.  The same is true with chronic illness after about the 8 week point. 

Support symptoms are able to adequately manage acute illness.  Everyone has an idea about what to say and do.  "Oh I hope you get better soon."  They send candy and flowe...

I read a lot of research articles.  Clients and colleagues send me links to articles.  I listen to television news reports on science often.  There are some common misconceptions about what people understand.  One of the big issues is looking at things that occur together.  If something happens and another thing generally happens the two things may be correlated.  If there are dark clouds in the sky and my car windshield is wet in the morning I may think it was t...

I met a delightful psychologist yesterday at a Los Angles County Psychological Association (LACPA) meeting specializing in providing services to chronic and persistent mentally ill patients.  We spent some time talking after the meeting about the similarites between chronic and persistent mental illness and chronic or undiagnosed physical illness.  We talked about the impact of anxiety, difficulties with compliance with treatment, problems with stimatization, and issues regarding in...

There is basic information that emergency personnel require for all patients.

• Full name of patient
• Age/date of birth
• medical symptoms
• medical diagnoses
• current medications including any vitamins, herbs, or food used as medication, doseage
  

This information should be known by all persons carrying for someone, and should be readily kept in a purse or wallet and updated as needed.

There's a very inspiring article in Lemondrop about Jenna Phillips, a personal trainer in Los Angeles.  She had a head injury in 2000.  The field of head injury evaluation and rehabilitation has improved substantially in understanding what happens in a head injury and what anticipated recovery should be. 

In the 1980's the vast majority of individual were told that concussion was "mild," that recovery would occur in weeks or months, and that any residual symp...

Many people have concerns about traditional medicine.  Although regulatory agencies have been set up to ensure both the safety and efficacy of medications, new side-effects and problems with medication are frequently reported in the news.  People have beliefs about physical illness and wellness which may conflict with traditional western medical ideas.  As a result people often turn to alternatives to western medicine either because they are afraid, they don't believe it is or ...

Many physical illnesses have psychological symptoms that accompany them.  Depression and anxiety are the most common of the psychological symptoms but psychosis, compulsions, hallucinations or delusions are not uncommon.  It is believed that about 70% of psychological symptoms may relate to undiagnosed or inadequately treated medical conditions.

Many types of medical conditions are known to cause psychological symptoms.  Infection is likely to cause depression...

There's a survey up on the site regarding headaches.  Most people are aware of two types of headaches--migraine and tension.  There are many different types of headaches besides those two.

Migraine headaches are vascular headaches frequently causing visual disturbances, sensitivity to light, sound, odors and noise.  They may be aggrivated by certain foods like cured meats, red wines, or aged cheeses.  With migraine headaches hands and feet frequently get ...