Explain specific health psychology issues
In this assignment I will be explaining how smoking can be caused, the effects and how they have an impact on the individual, and the effects and how they will have an impact on the individual. I will also be explaining how the Theory Reasoned action and the Health Belief model are linked to a case study, showing how an individual can start smoking and how it effects them.
Nicole is 17 and has started smoking over the last few months. This started after Nicole started going out with her friends more frequently. As all of her friends smoke Nicole started to feel different and left out as she didn’t smoke at all.
With her home life her father is an alcoholic and also smokes 40 a day so hasn’t notice Nicole stealing cigarettes and money for cigarettes from him. Nicole’s mother works two jobs to help look after her and Nicole so she doesn’t spend a lot of time with Nicole so she hasn’t noticed that Nicole has started to become addicted to cigarettes and has also started to experiment with different types of drugs. This makes Nicole feel very lonely and makes her feel that she has no one to confide in to about her addiction.
The health belief model (HBM) assumes the likelihood that an individual will engage in particular health behaviour is a function of, the extent to which they believe they’re vulnerable to the associated disease. Also, their awareness of the consequences of getting the disease.
(utwente, n.d.) http://www.utwente.nl/cw/theorieenoverzicht/Theory%20Clusters/Health%20Communication/Health_Belief_Model/ The theory of Reasoned Action explains that behavioural intent is created or caused by two factors: people’s attitudes and our subjective norms. An example could be an individual may want to smoke once a day, but their social group might influence them to smoke 5 – 6 times a