PSY 212 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Psy, Pain Management
Document Summary
Epidemiology is study of frequency, distribution, and causes of infectious and noninfectious disease in population. Changing patterns of illness have been charted. E. g. they study kind of cancer and why cancers are more prevalent than other in certain areas. In context of epidemiologic statistics there are two important terms: Morbidity: number of cases of disease that exist at some given point in time. Can be expressed as number of new cases- incidence or number of existing cases- prevalence. Mortality: number of deaths due to particular causes. These statistics are essential to health psychologists to know major cause of disease to reduce occurrence. Very concerned in improving quality of life so that people with chronic illness can live remaining years as free from pain disability and lifestyle compromise as possible. Other factors contributing to rise of health psychology: expansion of health care services. Very big gap between good and bad health care. Health psych represents an important perspective on issues.
