Health Services offered by Chartered Psychologists
Rehabilitation after heart attacks, strokes, major surgery. An early contribution of health psychology was to develop programmes to assist patients who have experienced major illnesses to make changes in lifestyle that reduce the risk of continuing pathological processes, increase the uptake of health-protective behaviours and limit disability associated with chronic illness.
Health psychologists have expertise in developing, implementing and evaluating interventions to facilitate behaviour change with a particular emphasis on reducing the risk of ill health and premature dealth through smoking cessation, through changes to patterns of alcohol consumption, food choice and exercise behaviour. For example, smoking cessation programmes are usually run by health psychologists, and most are informed by psychological research. Health psychologists can offer individual and group-based treatments.
Promoting self-management of disease, expert patient programmes: Health psychologists have found that patients have substantial expertise in their own diseases and this can be accessed to utilise more effective self-monitoring and self-management strategies for chronic conditions such as asthma, diabetes, angina and arthritis. Recent NHS interest in expert patient programmes makes health psychologists well placed to develop, manage and evaluate these groups.
Helping patients and
families deal with chronic and life-threatening diseases:
Chronic and life-threatening diseases have a major
emotional impact on patients and their families. Health
psychologists have the skills to help patients and
their families to cope with these emotional threats
and challenges.
Community-based health promotion and disease prevention programmes: Countless research studies indicate that health behaviours such as smoking, food choice, exercise, and alcohol consumption contribute substantially to the risk of diseases such as cancer and cardio-vascular disease. Prevention of these major causes of disability and premature death requires population-wide changes in lifestyle. Health psychologists have been responsible for identifying the primary determinants of these behaviours and developing community-based interventions to modify lifestyles.
Research into the psychological factors associated with disease progression and functional limitation: Health psychologists are trained in the biopsychosocial model of disease (e.g. links between stress and immune function; social support and recovery) and have specific expertise in designing and carrying out research into the causes, consequences and management of diseases.
Communication between patients and health professionals: Health psychologists were among the first to recognise the importance of effective communications between patients and their health professionals, not only in relation to the patients' well-being but also to health outcomes and professional satisfaction. Psychologists are able to offer practical communications training to health professionals and are well equipped to carry out research into the communication needs in relation to specific services.
Pain management programmes: Behavioural treatments are widely known to reduce chronic pain and disability and health psychologists are engaged in out-patient and in-patient pain management programmes. They have expertise in treating individual patients and groups with the aim of improving quality of life and returning patients to work. More recently they have become concerned with preventing chronic pain in primary health care and through acute pain service in hospitals.
Expertise in designing trials and developing and using reliable measures in health and health care: Health psychologists are trained in the design and application of new research methods for assessing treatments and scales to evaluate the success of health care programmes.
Research into the psychobiology and socio-cultural aspects of ageing: Health psychologists have paid particular attention to the variability in ageing processes and are trained to carry out research into the processes and protective factors that foster successful ageing.