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B. Add hands-on behavioral medicine life skills seminars.
- Specific Elements
- Cognitive Restructuring
- Myers Briggs Personality Type®
- Health Journaling
- Creative Meditation
- Background
Many colleges make behavioral medicine programs available to students through their counseling and health centers. Typically, only highly motivated or severely distressed students avail themselves of these programs. These practical skills and concepts benefit everyone because they enhance academic performance, emotional well-being, physical health, and interpersonal relationships. By actively teaching these skills and concepts to all or most students, COLLEGE X graduates will be better prepared to overcome adversity, and achieve their full potential in all areas of life. This is particularly important for those who are continuing on to even more demanding environments, such as medical school. Teaching basic psychological techniques from a wellness point-of-view may also help remove the stigma of mental health counseling, making it easier for COLLEGE graduates to seek appropriate professional help in the future for problems that go beyond the every day concerns.
- Specific Element Details
- Cognitive Restructuring
Cognitive restructuring is the psychological term for techniques used to assist people with changing unHealthy Lifestyleor unproductive thought patterns. Since our emotional state, and therefore our subjective sense of well-being, is created in part by our conscious and subconscious thoughts, it is both a logical and proven conclusion that changing negative thought patterns can reduce the risk of depression.
Thoughts and emotions trigger the release of neurotransmitters and hormones that influence multiple aspects of every body system -- heart rate and blood pressure, blood sugar levels, smooth and skeletal muscle contraction and relaxation, mental concentration, lung function, immune cell function, pain perception. Therefore, it is not surprising that physical health is also affected by our thoughts and emotions.
Research studies document that a pessimistic explanatory style is associated with academic and athletic failure, depression, heart disease, decreased immune cell function, and -- in at least one study -- a 20% higher risk of death compared to more optimistic thinkers.
Optimistic explanatory style can enhance teaching and learning skills, and is associated with an increased likelihood of engaging in Healthy Lifestylebehaviors such as avoiding excessive alcohol consumption and smoking.
This course would help students understand how thoughts drive feelings and actions, and teach them to recognize that thoughts are often not accurate, especially in the midst of stressful situations. They would learn a concrete set of skills to help them think more accurately, and practice applying these skills to college and family situations, so they may become more resilient, productive and successful.
- Myers Briggs Personality Type ®
The concepts of myersbriggs personality type have been used successfully in the following areas of life: personal growth, relationship and family counseling, management training and leadership development, education and curriculum development, diversity and multicultural training, career exploration, career development, and career counseling.
Myers Briggs personality type concepts can also be successfully applied to health, fitness and stress management. This is one of my primary research interests, including an original stress management application of personality type called "Feeding the Fourth Function". Tailoring diet, fitness and stress management programs to one's specific personality type may increase the probablity of lifelong behavior change. Documenting this theory would make an interesting faculty-student research project.
- Health Journaling
Dr. James Pennebaker is the pioneer for medical research on the physical health benefits of structured writing. His research explored the biological and health effects of anonymously disclosing secrets and traumatic events. He found that those who wrote about their traumatic experiences reported fewer minor illnesses, fewer visits to the doctor, a decrease in the number of days off work or school, higher grade point averages, and had a more optimistic outlook on life than those who only wrote about ordinary events. Working with researchers at a major medical school, he has also been able to document that journaling improves immune system function. These studies required people to write only twenty minutes a day for four consecutive days, yet the physical health benefits were still present four months after a single four day intervention.
Recently, other researchers at North Dakota State University documented journaling as a potential adjunct treatment for medical conditions with stress-related components. They noted improvements in the lung function of people with asthma, and improvement in pain management and range of motion for people with rheumatoid arthritis.
It would be relatively easy to introduce this technique to COLLEGE X students as part of the existing English, wellness and psychology courses.
- Creative Meditation
The health benefits of eliciting the relaxation response are well-documented in the medical literature. Most hospitals have stress management programs that teach patients the art of meditation. This course would be a "hands-on" introduction to a potpourri of ancient and modern health practices that facilitate an alpha-brain wave state. These include conventional massage, acupressure massage, Reiki, meditation, guided imagery, Tai Chi, and Yoga. Seminar discussions would include the "fight or flight" and "relaxation" responses, tailoring meditation to specific myersbriggs personality types, identifying health fraud, the distinction between "unproven" and "ineffective" modalities, the role of the placebo effect in user testimonials, and a non-science major's guide to interpreting research studies.
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