The subfield of social psychology has researched the incredible power that social situations have on people’s behavior and decision making. Until this point, we have studied how humans act as individuals, but we all live in a social world. Through exploration, you will become more aware of specific ways in which social factors influence individual behavior.
Each of us might know a family member or a friend who at some point will be diagnosed with some type of mental health issue. You will also explore several categories of mental health issues. You will examine mood disorders, anxiety disorders, psychotic disorders, personality disorders, and many more. You will also look at the diverse ways psychologists treat each issue. With this awareness of all of these aspects of psychology, we can advance the goals of psychology to improve people’s lives and our social world for the better.
For this assessment, you look at ways that stress can impact health. You will choose one area of stress to better understand its impact on health and ways to intervene in it to improve health. You will create a brochure that outlines what you have found, including recommended interventions, and explain why and how these interventions can be effective.
In your career, you may find yourself working for an agency or organization that offers certain services or creates awareness about a certain topic, and you may be asked to design literature or marketing materials for your community. For this assessment, you will create a brochure that addresses an area of stress. In the brochure, you will present professional information about the stress and how it impacts physical or mental health. You will look at ways that people can reduce the problems associated with the stress and recommend interventions and support your ideas with information from theory, concepts, or research in psychology.
Below are some ideas. You may choose one of these, but you are not required to select from this list—you might have another area you would like to explore.
Psychotropic medication and well-being.
Lack of self-care.
Poor nutrition on developmental or mental health.
Effects of insomnia.
Physical effects of drug abuse.
Use the Brochure Template [DOCX] or the Alternate Brochure Template [DOCX] for this assessment. In your brochure, include the following:
Describe a common stressor and how it can impact physical or mental health.
Use credible sources such as scholarly research articles or professional websites, such as Harvard Health, to support your description. Do not use blogs or other popular sources such as WebMD or Wikipedia.
Recommend ways to reduce the effects of the stressor.
Look at interventions that have been tested and found to be effective in helping with the problem.
Support your ideas for reducing the stress with information from professional sources or scholarly research that provide evidence that the recommendations have been shown to reduce stress.
For example, if you recommend an intervention such as yoga to address self-care, provide scholarly research that shows that yoga can reduce stress.
Use the brochure template to format your brochure.
Submit the completed brochure as your deliverable for the assessment. When you are citing your sources, be sure to use in-text citations that include author and year, and provide references that include the author, year, and title. It may be helpful to visit Evidence and APA or the Writing Center for tips on citing sources.
By successfully completing this assignment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assignment criteria:
Competency 2: Apply research findings from scholarly literature to current issues in the field of psychology.
Apply professional or scholarly evidence to support the impact of a stressor on physical or mental health.
Competency 3: Apply psychology knowledge to promote mental health and well-being.
Explain the impact of a stressor on physical or mental health.
Recommend interventions to reduce the effects of an identified stressor, using scholarly or professional evidence to support recommendations.
Competency 4: Write using a clear purpose, organization, tone, and sentence structure.
Communicate clearly with appropriate purpose, organization, tone, and sentence structure.
Use in-text citations that include author and year.
Provide references that include author, year, and title.
