ABPP Clinical Health Psychology flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Biopsychosocial model

Engel's framework holding that biological, psychological, and social factors jointly determine health, illness, and treatment response, so no single level alone explains clinical outcomes.

Allostatic load

Cumulative physiological wear from chronic or repeated adaptation to stress, indexed by dysregulated cortisol, blood pressure, inflammatory, and metabolic markers over time.

Diathesis-stress model

A model in which a pre-existing vulnerability, biological or psychological, combines with environmental stressors to produce disorder, with risk reflecting their interaction.

HPA axis

Stress-response cascade in which hypothalamic CRH stimulates pituitary ACTH, which stimulates adrenal cortisol release; cortisol then negatively feeds back on brain regulators.

Stages of Change

Transtheoretical model stages of precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance, with interventions matched to the person's current stage and relapse recycling earlier.

Motivational interviewing

Directive but nonconfrontational counseling style that elicits and strengthens the patient's own change talk while minimizing resistance, using open questions, affirmations, reflections, and summaries.

Health Belief Model

Behavior-prediction model based on perceived susceptibility, severity, benefits, and barriers, plus cues to action and self-efficacy, explaining uptake of preventive health behaviors.

Levels of prevention

Primary prevents disease onset, secondary detects disease early, and tertiary reduces disability and complications once disease is established.

Positive predictive value

Proportion of test positives who truly have the condition; it rises with prevalence, so the same sensitivity and specificity yield more false positives in low-prevalence settings.

Standard error of measurement

An index of score imprecision computed as the standard deviation times the square root of one minus reliability; used to build confidence intervals around observed scores.

Functional analysis

Behavioral assessment identifying antecedents, the target behavior, and its consequences to determine which contingencies maintain the behavior and should be targeted for intervention.

Reliability versus validity

Reliability is consistency of scores across items, occasions, or raters; validity is whether scores support the intended interpretation and use in a given context.

CBT for insomnia

First-line treatment combining stimulus control, sleep restriction, cognitive restructuring of sleep beliefs, and relaxation, outperforming hypnotics in sustained benefit for chronic insomnia.

Fear-avoidance model

Model in which catastrophic pain interpretation produces fear and avoidance, leading to disuse, depression, and greater disability, maintained independently of initial tissue damage.

Graded exposure

Systematic, hierarchical, repeated confrontation with feared stimuli or activities without escape, used to extinguish fear and avoidance in pain and cardiac rehabilitation.

Stepped-care model

Service design delivering low-intensity interventions first and reserving specialist psychotherapy for nonresponders or higher-severity patients, matching resource intensity to need.

Illness representations

Leventhal's model of patients' beliefs about a condition's identity, cause, timeline, consequences, controllability, and coherence, which shape coping and adherence.

Adherence in chronic disease

The degree to which behavior matches an agreed regimen; average adherence in chronic illness is roughly fifty percent, with forgetting, complexity, and cost as common barriers.

Cardiac rehabilitation outcomes

Structured exercise, education, and psychosocial support after cardiac events improve functional capacity and mood; post-infarction depression predicts worse cardiac outcomes and mortality.

Consultee-centered consultation

Consultation model that builds the referring clinician's or team's capacity and skills rather than only evaluating the individual patient, improving future problem-solving.

SBAR handoff

Structured communication format conveying Situation, Background, Assessment, and Recommendation, reducing omissions and errors during interprofessional clinical handoffs.

Interprofessional collaboration

Team practice requiring negotiated role clarity, shared patient-centered goals, and mutual accountability, with role confusion a common source of team dysfunction.

Curbside consultation

Informal advice sought without direct patient assessment; recommendations should be framed as provisional, limited by available information, and documented appropriately.

Cultural formulation

Structured assessment of cultural identity, illness explanations, psychosocial stressors, clinician-patient relationship dynamics, and overall cultural influence on diagnosis and care.

Explanatory model

The patient's beliefs about a condition's cause, onset, mechanism, course, and appropriate treatment; discordance with the biomedical model predicts nonadherence.

Minority stress model

Framework holding that chronic stigma-related stress and discrimination explain elevated mental and physical health burden in marginalized groups beyond general stress exposure.

Measurement invariance

Statistical demonstration that an instrument assesses the same construct equivalently across groups; required before interpreting mean differences across cultures or languages.

Decisional capacity

Decision-specific ability comprising understanding, appreciation, reasoning, and expressing a choice; it is assessed for a particular decision rather than as a global trait.

Psychotherapy notes protection

Under HIPAA, psychotherapy notes receive heightened protection and generally require separate patient authorization for disclosure, unlike routine treatment records.

Duty to protect

Legal obligation, defined by jurisdiction-specific statutes, to take protective action when a patient poses serious danger to an identifiable person, potentially overriding confidentiality.

Supervision contract

Written agreement specifying supervision goals, methods, evaluation criteria, and due-process remediation procedures, protecting trainee development and client welfare.

Logic model

Program framework linking inputs, activities, outputs, short-term outcomes, and long-term impact, guiding selection of measurable indicators for evaluation.