Health Psychology & Economics / By: Kimberly Swanson

Economic affect health psychology because it helps pin point or further explain the exact reason why a phenomena happens.  It gives a clearer or a more define explanation behind the purpose of human behavior.  It explains why people do certain things when it comes to their health.  There are three ways in which economics has a positive affect on health psychology:   it further explains human “(consumer) behavior”, “health disparity”, and the correlation between patients and their overall health within the healthcare system (Hanoch & Rice, 2010).

 The positive influence that economics has on health psychology is that it brings more depth to psychological research in human/consumer behaviors.   According to Hanoch and Rice, “economic thinking and methodology could supplement and enrich methods currently employed by health psychologists” (Hanoch & Rice, 2010).

One of the many issues that health psychologists explore is “health disparity” (Hanoch & Rice).  Economic research on health issues and topics literally blows the cover to health disparity along with the specific categories in which ethnicity or which socioeconomic group is greatly affected. 

Economic and psychological research both shows the correlation between patients and their over all health within the healthcare system.  Both sciences enhance the other and psychologists are able to develop more plausible theories and pinpoint factors that cause a person to develop certain illnesses.

 Economic studies also assist in showing possible solutions to resolving these problems.  Hanoch and Rice states, “To combine findings and approaches to both field, we believe, can provide policymakers and practitioners a richer perspective and better tools to battle theses serious and important problems (Hanoch & Rice, 2010).

Copyrighted 2013 by Kimberly Swanson (Messenger Publishing, Inc.) all rights reserved.

Reference

Hanoch, Y. & Rice, T. (2010). Health Psychology Meets Health Economics. In Suls, J. M., Davidson, K. W. and Kaplan, R. M. (Eds.) Handbook of Health Psychology and Behavioral Medicine (pp. 290-302). Guilford.