Behavioral Health | EssayIvy.com

Running Head: BEHAVIORAL HEALTH

Behavioral Health

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BEHAVIORAL HEALTH 2

ARTICLE 1

Haase, C. M., Holley, S. R., Bloch, L., Verstaen, A., & Levenson, R. W. (2016). Interpersonal

emotional behaviors and physical health: A 20-year longitudinal study of long-term

married couples.Emotion, 16(7), 965.

Haase et al.’s (2016) study explores the notion that there is a significant specificity in the

association between an individual's health, and his/her interpersonal emotional behaviors or traits.

It studied the relationship between certain interpersonal emotional behavior and the variations in

certain physical health symptoms in the middle-aged as well as older longstanding married couples

for over 20 years. It aimed at examining the characterization of the physiological differences

between one speaker character and like anger and one listener trait, stonewalling. These were to

be used as predictors of common physical health symptoms, musculoskeletal and cardiovascular

symptoms.

Most of the emotions are deemed to happen in a social context, whereby intimate relations

form the basis for certain compelling emotions. However, the emotions have the capacity to

intrigue intense activation of certain expressive behaviors alongside the physiological systems

such as the endocrine, somatic and autonomic which assist in preparing the organism to cope with

critical challenges and opportunities. According to Haase et al. (2016), emotions predict a proximal

health-relevant outcome or results like immune and hormone functioning and the distal health

outcomes like cardiovascular diseases.

Anger is an emotional behavior that results from speaking. It is the commonest emotional

behavior in a marital conflict. Additionally, it is deemed to arise following an experience of being

hurt or slighted by intentional deeds of another individual. On the other hand, stonewalling results

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from listening. It results from complete lack of listening behavior or turning out in response to

partners request to change through criticism, nagging, and concern. It is often displayed when a

couple engages in patterns of demand-withdraw behavior. While anger is associated with an

increase in somatic activities and activation of the cardiovascular, stonewalling is involved in a

decrease of somatic activity and increased muscle tension (Haase et al., 2016).

Some of the effects of anger on body activities are expressive behaviors such as widened

eyes, lowered eyebrows, pressed lips. Vocal expressions include a sudden elevation of tempo,

amplitude, and pitch. Some of the expressive behavior involved with stonewalling include

appearance of a frozen and stiff face, rigid neck muscles, and clenched jaw. The verbal expressions

include silence or monosyllabic answers.

Haase et al.’ study (2016), included socio-demographic aspects of religion and ethnicity.

Some of the cultural differences in distribution attachment involved the blacks 6%, Hispanics 3%,

Asian 3% and religion which involved either Catholics or Protestants at 61%. They were primarily

Caucasian (86%). As a result, the original sample which was recruited in 1989, was from San

Francisco Bay Area in California. Nevertheless, the findings hardly generalized to other samples

to spouses or of spouses from other cultures. This is because the data was derived from a given

sample designed to be typical longstanding marriages of particular ages and geographic regions.

The participants were acquired from a longitudinal (ongoing) study of the longstanding

marriages where 156 couples were involved. It constituted of 82 middle-aged couples of ages

between 40 to 50 and 74 couples in older group individuals aged between 60 and 70. It involved

an initial sample for San Fransico Bay area, California and matched socio-demographic aspects.

The resulting sample was Caucasian, Protestant or Catholic, with children and relatively well-off

socioeconomically. The procedure involved assessment of data at four-time points in 20 years.

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Discontinuation of the study by some couples was caused by a divorce, death, unknown reasons.

A set of questionnaires was completed at each of the four points alongside a laboratory session.

The laboratory sessions couple were involved in three conversations, (15-minutes each)

that included, the day's events, conflict concern, and pleasant topics. There were hidden cameras

for video recording. Trained coders were used to measure the emotional behavior targeting the

anger behavior, stonewalling, fear behavior and sadness. Physical symptoms were also measured

by use of a self-report tool, CMI, Cornell Medical Index. There was a hypothesis that the ultimate

health differences reflected pre-existing differences between individuals who end up in

emotionally different kinds of marriages. There was also a hypothesis that anger would predict an

escalation of cardiovascular symptoms and stonewalling increasing musculoskeletal symptoms.

The hypothesis focused mainly on the within-spouse relationships.

The dyadic latent growth results showed that higher level of anger behaviors in husbands

initially predicted significant escalation of the cardiovascular symptoms over time. Concurrently,

higher levels of stonewalling in husbands initially predicted significant escalation of

musculoskeletal symptoms over time. Contrast to the dyadic latent growth, in the cross-lagged

path models, wives showed associations that wives anger predicted variations in their physical

health problems in cardiovascular symptoms, and stonewalling predicted an elevation of

musculoskeletal symptoms. The support was shown for the specificity of stonewalling-

musculoskeletal and anger-cardiovascular associations. Additionally, in both the other negative

emotional behaviors did not predict respective health symptoms. The anger-cardiovascular

relationship barely changed when controlling for marital satisfaction and the other negative

emotional behaviors.

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However, the relationships found between particular interpersonal emotional behavior as

well as specific physical symptoms were notably weaker for wives that husbands though in cross-

lagged models only. The cross-lagged model showed that emotional behaviors predicted physical

health, physical health symptoms and the emotional behavior for both wives and husbands. The

cross-spouse relationships depicted that sadness behaviors of one spouse predicted in an increase

in the health symptoms of the other spouse.

ARTICLE 2

Ciarrochi, J., Parker, P., Sahdra, B., Marshall, S., Jackson, C., Gloster, A. T., & Heaven, P. (2016).

The development of compulsive internet use and mental health: A four-year study of

adolescence. Developmental psychology, 52(2), 272.

The study was aimed at determining if the Compulsive Internet Use is a consequence, an

antecedent to a poor mental health or do the mental health problem and the problematic internet

usage reciprocally influence each other. It was to bring out the relationship between the

development of problematic internet usage as well as the mental health problems. Study 1 applied

a longitudinal research design that was used in tracking CIU development and mental health in

Grade 8, while study 2 was an extension of study 1. However, study 2 examined the association

between internet behaviors with CIU within the different genders. The research question was

whether the problematic internet usage caused mental health problems, if the mental help problem

caused internet usage in problematic ways for the young people or if the mental health problem

alongside the problematic internet usage influenced each other mutually. The research question

for study 2 was on if certain internet activities are more related to CIU than others. However, the

two studies were purported to examine the relationship between mental health and the CIU.

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Some of the terms applied in the problematic internet usage are for instance pathological

internet use, problematic internet age, internet addiction disorder and compulsive internet use.

Problematic internet usage may be interpreted as an incapacity to regulate or moderate one's

internet usage, leading to negative impacts to the everyday tasks or actions. Problematic internet

usage may be caused by depressive symptoms, for instance, through escaping painful feelings or

thoughts, with the psychopathology being a distal cause that is followed by proximal maladaptive

cognitions sufficient enough to trigger CIU (Ciarrochi et al., 2016). This may lead to poorer mental

health results. The problematic internet usage differs from drug usage, in that higher consumption

of drug usage may be regarded as problematic while higher usage of the internet may yield either

positive or negative outcome. For instance, it may be used in seeking information and building

social relationships. It is similar to other addictive disorders like tolerance, withdrawal phenomena,

and negative social repercussions.

Additionally, young people with mental health issues tend to use unhelpful coping

strategies like compulsive usage of internet as a way of avoiding how to deal with the situation

they are undergoing. A gender difference occurred where the CIU and the mental health problems

escalated during the school years and in more in females as compared to males between grades 8

and 9. According to research, the CIU is more prevalent in males than in females in the western

and Eastern countries (Ciarrochi et al., 2016). The female CIU was most likely to involve a social

form of internet usage such as Facebook and email while the males were more likely to be drawn

to less social internet activities such downloading, visiting adult sites and playing games. However,

this formed the hypothesis for the current study.

According to the study, CIU results to poor mental health though the mental issue hardly

predicts CIU development. Ciarrochi et al. (2016), assert that a mental problem such as low self-

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esteem predicts the development of internet addiction in adolescents. They asserted that the most

significant risk factors for the emergence of CIU were ADHD and hostility for both males and

females. Nevertheless, social phobia and depression forecasted a later CIU concern only among

the females. The study cited other sources which revealed that mental health was a prediction of

the CIU in adolescents following problems such as anxiety, social withdrawal, and depression in

childhood.

The participants in the first study were Catholic secondary schools scholars (17) from the

Australian Eastern Coast. The demographic makeup of the sample considered the Australian

demography in consideration to employment, religious beliefs and ethnicity. Scholars involved in

this sample had religiously diverse perceptions, 18% atheists, 39% holding theistic beliefs and

43% as agnostic. There was voluntary participation and with hardly any financial incentive.

Informed consent was retained before the study began. The measures were demographics using

demographics variables such as ethnicity, religious beliefs, employment status of the parents and

gender. CIU was measured using a usage scale with items evaluated on a 5-point scale, ranging

from zero to four.

The mental health was evaluated by use of a General Health questionnaire (the 12-item)

alongside a 5-point scale. This measure was designed to reflect other types of addiction symptoms

in DSM such as loss of control, withdrawal symptoms, conflict with other different tasks,

preoccupation as well as employment of addictive activities to evade emotions. Study two

involved internet behavior that was evaluated in the Grade II sample of study one alongside a

Grade 10 sample which engaged seven Catholic schools who took part in study 1 Queensland

component with a total of 687 participants, of 327 females and 350 males. The measures in study

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1 involved mental health and CIU measures. Additionally, The Internet Behavior Questionnaire,

derived from van den Eijnden et al.'s work (2008) was also employed (Ciarrochi et al., 2016).

In study 1, the results were shown through the Autoregressive Cross-lag whereby CIU

displayed a significant stability over the years and a more modest stability of mental health. It

supported the antecedent model and showed inconsistency with consequences or the reciprocal

influence model. The results showed that CIU was a precursor to poor metal health development

while the poor mental health hardly predicted CIU development. It was consistent in both genders,

and mental health hardly predicted mental addiction.

Results for study 2 showed a relationship between internet behavior to CIU and gender.

The study hypothesized that males were more likely than the females to get involved in gaming as

well as accessing adult sites while females engaged in emailing and Twitter. The study showed

little linkage or relation between the frequency of internet behavior and poor mental health.

However, downloading of films, music and software were associated with worse mental health.

Additionally, Grade 10 showed a link with mental concerns with the usage rate of instant

messaging, Twitter and Facebook.

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References

Ciarrochi, J., Parker, P., Sahdra, B., Marshall, S., Jackson, C., Gloster, A. T., & Heaven, P. (2016).

The development of compulsive internet use and mental health: A four-year study of

adolescence. Developmental psychology, 52(2), 272.

Haase, C. M., Holley, S. R., Bloch, L., Verstaen, A., & Levenson, R. W. (2016). Interpersonal

emotional behaviors and physical health: A 20-year longitudinal study of long-term

married couples.Emotion, 16(7), 965.

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