Health Literacy For Personality And Socialization

Brief Overview

Discuss about the Health Literacy for Personality and Socialization.

Health literacy is an important aspect that every individual should develop in their lives. This is important because it helps the individual to identify what kind of disorders that he himself is facing. It also helps the individual to understand the significance of approaching to the healthcare sectors to ask for service. However, many cases are often reported where development of health literacy is completely absent and this lead to different types of issues in living a healthy quality life. Absence of knowledge about the efficacy of health interventions results the person to not only suffers from various diseases but also makes him apathetic towards healthcare (Simpson et al., 2017). It altogether leads to a compromised life full of negativity affecting the happiness that every individual human being should experience. Large number of psychologists has stated that each and every aspect of the human life is often shaped by different psychosocial stages that an individual goes through (Komenaka et al., 2014). Any obstruction in the particular stages results in creation of personalities that may not attain full maturity required to lead a health ad happy life. The essay will mainly portray a case study that will help us to know how development of stages in the psychosocial development of an individual affects a human being. It will also show how this personality may make him accept lifestyle factors which are unhealthy. His view over health literacy wills be viewed and proper interventions will be proposed for him.

From the entire case study, it was analyzed that Bill was a patient of chronic hypertension who was quite satisfied with his own life. However, from an outsider’s perspective, he was not at all healthy and maintained a lifestyle that was not proper. He had many bad habits of eating high calorie fast food which was one the main contributing factor for his obesity. He has a BMI of 34.7 which describes the fact that he is obese and he needs to follow healthcare interventions to maintain a quality lie. On close analysis, it was also seen that his personality is not liked by his wife as she describes him to be irritable but this does not concern him. He thinks himself to be self satisfied and does not care much about anyone else other than his own wishes and interests. If one looks over the psycho- sociological aspect, it can be seen that his development of personality has not gone through different stages as mentioned by Erikson successfully. This had resulted in poor development of social skills and an altogether different outlook towards family life. Erikson has explained 8 important stages which are needed of be completed successfully by every individual to lead a healthy life (Snow and Dibner, 2016). Personality of Bill inevitably shows that he might have faced severe issues which have resulted in poor development of social skills required to maintain a healthy family life. Moreover, during such stages of his mental and physical development, it was also seen that he had poor conception about healthcare systems and considered them as dog boxes. Health literacy is extremely important for every individual to develop successful access to care and also use services, for self care and also for chronic conditions. This would help in the maintenance of health as well as wellness for the individual. Health literacy is also important so that an individual can develop more active roles in decision mailing and management of his symptoms (Nakamura et al., 2014). However no such knowledge was found in him that lead him to the development of apathy towards healthcare. The perfect model of healthcare that he needs at this moment to make him experience a better life not only physically but also mentally, emotionally and socially is the trans-theoretical model which will mainly depends in individuals’ decision making as well as a model of intentional change. 

Factors Affecting health Decisions and Behaviour

From the early period of development in the adolescent as well as the young adulthood, Bill has been unfortunate to particularly undertake successful developments in his personality that had resulted in huge impact on his social as well as physical life. Due to improper development in creating the right attributes required to make a health relationship with partner, he had failed miserably in his marriage and does not even intend to take in initiatives that will help in the development of a better relationship with his wife (Prakash et al., 2015). Moreover he is too apathetic about his own life while he follows a lifestyle very harmful for his health. His diet is one of the most important risk factor that makes him vulnerable to any kind of heart diseases. He is suffering from obesity as his BMI is 34.7. As the case says that he has the habit of eating takeaways food which is mostly highly in calories.  Now, as he is lazy and is not ready take to take in any exercise that would burn his calories, he is gaining weight. Moreover it is also seen that he wants to reduce weight for his wife’s request but not due to his own will which clearly states that he is completely illiterate about how his food habits are harming him. Moreover disrespecting healthcare as dog boxes also makes one understand that he has no idea about how healthcare interventions would not only cure him but will also help him to provide a quality life. Besides, the entire case study gives an impression that he maintains a lazy life by gardening most of the times, fishing and others. Inactivity level is high in case of the patient and therefore he is highly vulnerable to different types of heart diseases (Baltes and Schaie, 2013). Moreover, he is a patient of hypertension and only asks the prescribers to recommend it to save money. He is lazy as in the sense as in his free time he goes and plays poker in place of undergoing severe rigorous exercises that he need to lessened down his weight. Absence of proper health literacy skills had made him to remain contended only with his pills for hypertension but his concern about his obese nature is yet not understood by him and it is extremely important for him to make him understand his risk factors and make him change his lifestyles.

Psycho-Physiological Aspects of health

While describing the psycho-physiological aspect of the entire case, one can explain it from the perspective of the theory given by Erikson. The concept of psychophysiology mainly deals with the relationship between the mental (Psyche) and physical (Psychological) processes (Schwartz et al., 2014). Mainly it helps in the approaching of the scientific study that deals with the interaction of the mind with that of the body. Mainly these kinds of disorders are influenced by different types of emotional stresses and different types of mental disorders also get reflected in their physical health as well. As one can see in this case, that the mentality of the individual is quite different as he is not a believer of healthcare interventions thereby referring the healthcare sectors as dog boxes. He only wants to take slimming sessions not because of his feeling that he needs it but because he thinks his wife would create issues. One can here represent Erickson’s theory to discuss it. In his theory, he had stated a stage called industry versus inferiority where children learn the importance of new topics with specific skills (Srigley et al., 2015). If this initiative is not encouraged by teachers and seen parents, the learning directives of the children gets entangled resulting in confused situation (Darling-Fuscher and Leidy, 2015). In this case instead of feeling industrious, the child becomes inferior developing feelings that result to doubting their own abilities. This prevents them from reaching their own potential. This makes the child feel that society is demanding and they tend to fail to meet expectations. In this old age, Bill therefore feels that there is no need to look over his weight as he feels it to be the demand of society. He has not developed the knowledge that it is helpful for him to protect his health from uncertain fate. Moreover his second stage also discusses about the transition from childhood to adulthood when a person learns the concept of fidelity. The new adults explore their possibilities where they begin their own identity that depends on their outcomes of explorations (Corace et al., 2016). They tend to develop their career, families, housing and others governing sexual and occupational importance. This stage of fidelity thereby helps the individual to commit himself to others by accepting others in spite of ideological differences. Any crisis in this stage results in altogether different stages in the personality affecting his sexual and occupational life (Florindo et al., 2014). Mainly because of severe issues, it might have been possible that Bill had developed a personality that does not maintain the fidelity nature as he had been very neglecting to his wife in later stages. Erickson’s theory of stagnation and despair is also found among Bill. Therefore we see that a large number of factors are associated that had remain intricately associated with his poor knowledge development in healthcare. He has very little wish of developing his health system and only takes his pills since it helps him in gardening and not because it helps him to keep check on his hypertension. Therefore it is extremely important for the nurse to take up a model of healthcare to make him understand the importance of quality living.

The best method that can be considered for treatment of patients who are apathetic and have very poor knowledge about the contribution of healthcare is the Trans-theoretical model. It mainly helps in developing the knowledge of an individual in integrating new behaviors as well as goals and programs that can be carried on at various levels. It mainly contains six important stages and at each stage different interventions will help the patient to overcome his issues and manage progress (Abdi et al., 2016). This theoretical approach already believes that people do not change behaviors quickly and decisively. They believe that changes in behaviors especially habitual behavior takes place with the help of a cyclical procedure. In the first stage which is called precontemplation. The nurses should understand that the patient is unaware of the behavior that is creating problems in his personal life as well as his physical health. The patients in this place usually pressurize the nurse about saying the various cons of the changing behavior and underestimate the different positive aspects of the changing behavior (DeMezes et al., 2015). After continuous counseling from the nurse with prior education and discussion, in the second stage called contemplation, patient usually intend to start the healthy behavior in the foreseeable future. At this stage they learn to recognize that their behavior is problematic and they tend to consider of accepting the intervention. The third stage is the preparation phase where the patient will promise to take actions within 30 days and contributes to small steps towards adopting the behavioral changes. The fourth step is the action stage where the patient had already changed the behavior by modifying it or adopting new changes. The fifth stage is the maintenance stage where the nurse will ensure that the patient is maintaining the changed behavior and carrying it forward with the last stage being termination. In this stage, the patient develops a feeling where he no longer wants to go back into the previous unhealthy behavior.

The nurse should thereby raise his consciousness and help him in emotional arousal of the health behavior whether positive or negative. The nurse should also help the patient in self reappraisal that the healthy behaviour us helping him. She would also help in social reappraisal making him see how his changes are helping others (Valpied and Hegarty, 2015). The nurse also helped him in social liberation making him see that society is supportive of the behavior along with self liberation making him belief that changes are for his better good. Counseling with his relations, help him to overcome different issues in personal relationship so that they can also support her wishes. Counter conditioning would help him to remove his bad thoughts and incorporate his positive thoughts. Reinforcement management is also important like providing rewards for positive behavior and reducing rewards for negative behavior. The nurse should also make sure that there would be stimulus control which can be achieved by reengineering the environment. This would help in development of cues and reminders to encourage and support the healthy behavior and remove unhealthy behavior.

Conclusion:

Bill is an individual with a chronic hypertension as well as obesity who is highly apathetic to healthcare. This is mainly due to lack of knowledge about health literacy that had mainly caused a sense of disbelief in him. It is therefore extremely important for the healthcare professionals to make him go through a health care system that would not only help him recover physically by diet charts and exercises but also thorough a behavioural changes. These are extremely important for making him lead a quality life.

References:

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