Essay on Theory Alignment

There have been many proposed theories in history that deal with the change in health behavior. One of the most commonly used by many therapists and physicians is the Health Belief Model (HBM), which was started in the 1950s and has shown tremendous success towards change in the health behaviors of individuals (Strecher, McEvoy DeVellis, Becker & Rosenstock, 1986). The theory was implemented because of some failures towards reducing asymptomatic illness and is geared towards action and psychological growth among individuals. Moreover, the HBM aids in instilling the personal responsibility to people to work hard on their psychological needs and avoid experiencing some health-related issues facing the previous generations. For instance, I have been having difficulties in physical exercise due to personal attitude, social media, and friends’ backlash challenges, and HBM seems the best theory to adopt towards my 29 days journey of behavior change. By adopting the HBM model, I can change my irregular sleeping pattern behavior and increase my physical exercise pattern.

Through the HBM theory, I have started a 29-day process to change my exercise and sleeping behavior to avoid experiencing some health-related problems that are mostly caused by lack of exercise. Moreover, the 29-day behavioral change journey comprises of eliminating some of my favorite activities, such as sleeping and social media usage, which is a difficult task that needs a lot of support and self-discipline to accomplish. For instance, social media is much attractive, and every platform requires the millennium generation’s attention to link and connect with the outside world digitally. Thus through the adoption of HBM theory, I will have a successful 29-day behavioral change journey with few complications or difficulties.

According to the Health Belief Model (HBM) theory, is a lack of physical exercise is associated with obesity, which comprises severity and perceives susceptibility. Also, the Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) supports the HBM theory by insisting that individual who is obsess are at higher chances of developing sleep apnea, hypertension, and stroke (National Institutes of Health., 2017). Due to the health as mentioned above conditions that can occur because of physical exercises, I have decided to set a morning routine and making sure that I go to bed early and sleep for a maximum of eight hours without distraction, and this reflects in improvements in productivity levels at school. However, going to bed and waking up after eight hours of sleep cannot be achieved easily due to my destructive behaviors; hence setting the alarm to signal me when it is time to sleep and when eight hours are over is a self-disciplinary action.

The second step that HBM helps is to ensure that the obstacles, as mentioned above, are eliminated when adopting a healthy behavior. For instance, because of late night chats on social media and with friends, the phone should always be off or in silent motion to avoid distraction while sleeping to stick to the daily activities routine as planned. However, to achieve the excellent health behavior of physical exercising regularly, I need my family’s help to keep on reminding me to have a perfect process with fewer challenges. The family support in terms of eating habits and having more time with them is one way that HBM seems to work effectively without failures; hence adopting the recommended steps works best for the behavior change.

Friend’s backlash is also among the social factors that have disrupted my physical exercising program. Moreover, the imposed restriction of Covid-19 measures by various states has made it difficult for me to connect and link up with my friends physically, and the only way to talk to each other is through social media or phone. Through adopting the HBM, it means that I reduce more hours I spend on the mobile phone connecting or talking to my friend and participate in other constructive activities and physical exercise being the priority in my to-do list. Therefore, avoiding friends is one of the problematic remedies to undertake towards behavior change because I will end up losing more of them for seeing that I do not have enough time for them.

In conclusion, is that The Health Belief Model (HBM) is one of the best theories to be adopted by psychologists and therapists for the booming health behavioral change in their patients. The approach emphasized predicting and explaining the physical and mental health care solutions or recommendations towards a particular individual’s particular behavior. Also, through HBM, an individual can identify the diseases related to specific action they practice to practice what the model suggests about options to adopt to avoid the unhealthy behavior. Besides, the HBM is essential because of its design to be able to prevent any kind of illness and at the same time offer the best solutions for an individual to avoid falling ill again in the future. Therefore, the Health Belief Model Theory remains one of the best theories to be adopted for any behavior change therapy.

References

LaMorte, W. (2018). The health belief model. Behavioral Change Models, Boston University School of Public Health.

National Institutes of Health. (2017). Clinical guidelines on the identification, evaluation, and treatment of overweight or obesity in adults: the evidence report (NIH Publication No. 98-4083). 1998.

Strecher, V. J., McEvoy DeVellis, B., Becker, M. H., & Rosenstock, I. M. (1986). The role of self-efficacy in achieving health behavior change. Health education quarterly, 13(1), 73-92.