Author Archives: Eve Gilles
Course Reflection
Overall, I have enjoyed learning about the biopsychosocial model for various health conditions, exploring factors that alter longevity and considering the problem of health disparities. I also benefited from the personal change project and enjoyed working on my research paper. … Continue reading
Careers in Health Psychology
I found the Healthcare Psychology Careers talk to be interesting and informative. Both speakers substantiated the importance of recognizing patient culture, background and thought processes when developing interventions and treatments, and I found particularly interesting the example about African-American hair … Continue reading
Gardiner Talk
Heather Gardiner’s talk regarding patient eligibility for kidney transplants raised questions about using BMI as surgery criteria and challenged disparities in transplant access. Minorities are disproportionately effected by kidney disease, largely because of greater risk for diabetes and hypertension, with … Continue reading
Longevity Ch. 14 and 15
Chapter 14 of The Longevity Project explores the effect of war and stress on physical health. The authors seek to understand why, despite proven negative effects of stress, many veterans and people who have undergone trauma live to old age. … Continue reading
Chapters 12 & 13
Chapter 12 of The Longevity Project explores the role of social support in predicting longevity, with social support measured by social network size, feeling of connection to others, and frequency of helping others. Interestingly, the authors found that while large … Continue reading
Chapters 10 and 11
Longevity Ch 10 Chapter 10 of The Longevity Project explores the relationship between career success and satisfaction and longevity. Overall, the chapter concludes that individuals with the most career success are least likely to die young, partly because they are … Continue reading
Chapters 8 and 9
Chapter 8 of The Longevity Project explores the relationship between physical activity and longevity. Interestingly, after being evaluated at age 11, the overall activity level of the Terman participants remained constant throughout their lives until a general decline around age … Continue reading
Ch 6 and 7
Chapter 6 of The Longevity Project explores how early life events affect longevity. Interestingly, although early health advantages and disadvantages were not important to later health, several aspects of early life do affect longevity. Breastfeeding was found to have little … Continue reading
Longevity Project Ch 4 & 5
Chapter 4 explores how cheerfulness and optimism relate to longevity. Surprisingly, being cheerful is not corellated with living longer and the more sober Terman participants tended to outlive their optimistic counterparts. There are various explanations for this; humor can be … Continue reading
Chapter 3 Longevity Project
Chapter 3 of The Longevity Project details the ways sociability can both help and hurt longevity and the lack of association between childhood sociability and a long life. Being sociable can result in healthy enthusiasm and social connectedness, but also … Continue reading