Health problems
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ATL: Essential understandings
The biopsychosocial model can be used to explain health problems.
Theory can be applied to prevent and treat health problems.
Prevalence rates of health-related problems change over time as a result of changes in social and cultural norms.
For this part of the unit, you should be able to talk about the nature of one health problem. This includes the biological, cognitive and social origins of the problem and potential prevention and/or treatment of the problem.
The IB Psychology course allows you to choose from the following list of health issues:
- Addiction - This could be smoking, alcohol or any other drug. It should, however, be a recognized addiction.
- Chronic pain
- Obesity
- Sexual health
- Stress
The guidance from the IB is that you should discuss "explanations" of health problems. This is very broad. To make sure that you have a rich understanding of the problem, this text addresses potential origins of the problem, ways to prevent the problem and current strategies to reduce the problem. This then links to the next part of the unit which is dedicated to health promotion campaigns.