Health Psychology

A Lifespan Approach

Selling Points

•  Its unique lifespan approach and chronological chapter organisation help make the complexities of health and illness more understandable and easier to follow for students.
• Taking a biopsychosocial perspective, it provides students with a comprehensive understanding of the biological, psychological, and social aspects of health and illness and their interactions across the lifespan.
• Explains and applies key concepts in health psychology, such as stress reactivity, acute and chronic stress, social relationships and social support, social isolation and loneliness, adversity, vulnerability, and resilience, based on their relevance across each stage of the lifespan.
• An emphasis on life course health trajectories considers the impact of prior life experiences – particularly adversity, trauma, and social inequalities such as poverty and discrimination – on subsequent health outcomes.
• Interventions, health behaviour change, and behaviour change techniques (BCTs) are covered in every chapter as salient to each particular life stage.

Pedagogy and Benefits

• Opening chapter learning objectives preview the key learnings in the chapter.
• Text boxes featuring hypothetical applied scenarios with accompanying guiding questions illustrate the issues discussed and bring these to life for students.
• Frequent boxed summaries throughout.
• End-of-chapter annotated recommendations for further reading to review and expand the key learnings.
• Key terms in bold throughout, with an end-of-book glossary for easy search and reference of definitions.