I found the information presented pretty interesting. I am currently going through Bio 200 and Organic chemistry, so these classes were all intertwined. I never really thought specifically of the biopsychosical model, but after this semester it all seems to make sense how the body works. This course really helped me bridge the gaps of biology and chemistry. Like psychological how the body responds to stress, this course provided an overview of what I then learned in Bio about signaling and neurological networks and cell how the cell communicates via chemicals. Then learning about those chemical reactions in my Chem 205 class, this class helped me to understand the bigger picture. It was interesting to hear how so many different factors contribute to health, some controllable and some uncontrollable. While some of it seemed pretty obvious, like eat healthy and exercise regularly. It occurred to me that this is not obvious to everyone, as the issue of obesity, diabetes, and CVD is still very prevalent in this country. Socially, many of these individuals do not have the means to eat healthy like coming from food deserts or not living in walkable neighborhood or just simply not having the time because the need to work to put food on the table. It made me really value where I stand socially and having the means to know these things and implement positive health behaviors in my life. I also appreciated the flow of the course, as the beginning information all seemed pretty intuitive, by the end of the course it made sense how the information learned at the beginning of the course release to issues such as diabetes, CVD, cancer and even HIV. As well as, how the biopsychosocial model plays a factor in just about everything.
I found the book okay, while a lot of it seemed pretty obvious there were some aspects I found interesting such as divorce and the effects it has on men versus women. Overall, I wish I saw more evidence of the authors findings, but I thought the concept of the study was pretty interesting. Conducting a study for that length of period would be extremely difficult, and I wonder the results that would be found today if a study like this one was to be conducted. However, I would want to see how minority groups and individuals from lower SES represented in a future study and how they would compare to the individuals represented in the Terman study. It was also interesting to read about some of my classmates’ take on the readings as they were often different than my interpretation.
I found the talks pretty useful, as it can often become difficult to relate the information taught in class to real life experiences. So to hear talks from people like Dr. Hiller, Ebony Lambert, and Dr. Olbirsch, really helped to bridge the two. it was especially interesting to hear someone who has been through the transplant process before and to hear his struggles with it, really showed how minorities would have increased trouble with this. To hear the various avenues of health psychology were definitely interesting as well. Even the talks about stress reduction and how to become more physically active on campus were useful, because I think everyone on campus can benefit from those talks in one way or another. I felt as if the talks in general helped to bridge the gaps from the information taught in class and how it is actually used outside of class.