Psicología de la saludEl contexto escolar como marco en prevención y educación para la salud

Abstract

From the fields of the Biomedical and behavioural Sciencies, there has arisen, in the last decades, a new way to consider the problems of health and illnesses, in which, together with the organic factors, a fundamental role is conferred on the behavioural and socio-environmental variables. This conceptual model, identified as bio-psycho-social, health problems consequently demands the treatment and prevention of to be carried out in an interdisciplinar way among the different Health sciencies. From these assumptions, the Psychology of Health is born as a new field of investigation and psychological intervention, where the level of health and physical and mental welfare is associated with the present style of living, that is, with the way of behaving and the ecological and social context where that behaviour occurs. In the intervention, the Psychology of Health adopts a function which is essentially preventive and promotive of health, focusing its proceedings on the decrease or elimination of risk of the health problems of the individual and the community, thus having an influence on the behavioural, ecological and social factors that are supposed to be involved in the level of mental and physical health. This preventive task of the Psychology of Health can only be attained through Education for Health, that is, through a global layout, where the educational and sanitary structures of a society are involved and which besides giving information, fosters the development of healthy behaviours in the subjects.