ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 explored mental activities (e.g., perception). These mental activities influence our response to the world around us (e.g., if we perceive and believe we are in danger, then we have a physical response to that perception and belief whether we are truly in danger or not). There is a body of research that has isolated some of these responses and how they relate to our health and disease. This research has focused on such variables as support, stress, emotional response, thoughts, and behaviors (for simplicity, we label these variables psychosocial phenomena). In Chapter 4, we list some examples of these psychosocial phenomena and their relationship to health. With this information, you will be better able to predict possible problems and perhaps prevent or change situations for health. For example, by knowing a patient is under distress and knowing that distress is associated with illness, an intervention strategy might be to help the patient change or modify the stress. This will often occur by assisting them to change their mental activity (e.g., changing their belief that there is no way out of a situation to perceiving and believing that there is a way out).
