Psychology in Action

Tag: health

  • The silver lining: research on personal growth after trauma

    Research on stressful life events like receiving a terminal diagnosis or the impact of losing a job has focused primarily on the negative psychological effects of such events.  However, clinicians and researchers began to realize that many of their patients were reporting positive changes after experiencing adversity. Interviews with cancer patients and other samples found,…

  • Possible link between poverty and health

    About a year ago I went on a field trip to the California Science Center to dissect cow eyes with a class of third graders. I am a mentor for a 3rd grade student through an organization called I Have a Dream (IHAD). I was awestruck by how smart, funny, adorable, and happy these children…

  • Gene expression difference in lonely versus socially integrated people

    Psychoneuroimmunology is a field you may not have heard of before, but if you break it down it’s pretty clear what the field studies: psych is for psychological, neuro for neuroendocrine (read: hormones), and  immunology for immune system. So it’s a field that studies how the mind effects the body. And specifically, how stress effects…