Adulthood and health behaviour

===Lecture Details===
Glenn Melvin; Week 5 MED1022; HLSD
===Lecture Content===
Health belief model is demographic variables feed into percieved susceptibility, severity, benefits, barriers, cues to action and health motivation determine likelihood of behaviour. Children may model health behaviour displayed by parents. Parents may also reward (operant conditioning) certain health behaviours (sports, healthy diet).
Perception of health depends on age (health perception actually increases despite declining health), social comparison (comparing self to others), temporal comparison (compare with earlier time point). Expectation of poor health leads to poor health-promoting behaviours.
Only about 50% of medication is taken to therapeutic benefit. Compliance is affected by positive and negative reinforcement, self efficacy (belief in ability to perform necessary behaviours), smokers with high self efficacy recover from relapse. Non-compliance can be due to social factors (lowe SES/education, low social support, cultural beliefs, concomitant illicit drug use. Reasons for non-compliance can be psychological (confidence in prescriber, forgetfulness, cautious about taking medication, denial of illness, belief attached to taking medication, pain. Non compliance can be due to treatment factors (number of prescriptions, complex dosing regimen, side effects, clinician factors, poor communication, minimal treatment effect). Percieved barriers and benefits are more powerful than susceptibility or severity of health threat.
Carers give increased adherence to treatment and self-care, better adjustment and coping to stressful events, better biological functioning, reduced mortality. Helpful caring is practical assistance, expressions of love, concern and understanding, consistency of care. Burden on carers can be financial pressure, lack of reciprocity, physical tiredness, lack of respite, anger, resentment, guilt, grief. Have a lower life satisfaction and poorer immune functioning. There is a sense of fulfilment, pride, personal growth, increased closeness
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