215
Institute for Christian Teaching
Education Department of Seventh-Day Adventists
TRANSTHEORETICAL MODEL
AS APPLIED TO ADVENTIST HEALTH BEHAVIOR CHANGE AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
by
523-03 Institute for Christian Teaching 12501 Old Columbia Pike Silver Spring, MD 20904 USA
Prepared for
The 30th The International Faith and Learning
Seminar
held at
June 16 – 28, 20
216
CONTENTS
I.
INTRODUCTION
A.
Background
B.
Definition of Health
The
Definition of Health
The
Five Dimensions of Health
C.
Adventist Health Principles
D.
Purpose of Study
II . TRANSTHEORETICAL MODEL
A.
Circumstances
that Led to the Development of The Model
B.
Theoretical Framework of the
Transtheoretical Model
1.
Stages of Change
2.
Process of change
II.
TRANSTHEORETICAL MODEL OF THE ADVENTIST
HEALTH
BEHAVIOR CHANGE
A.
Adventist Health Behavior
1. Target Behaviors: NEWSTART
2. Expected Outcomes
B.
Application of Stages of
Change to ¡°NEWSTART¡± Behaviors
III.
CONCLUSION
References
TRANSTHEORETICAL MODEL
AS APPLIED TO ADVENTIST HEALTH BEHAVIOR CHANGE AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
217
I. INTRODUCTION
A. Background
The change process is complex and interesting.
Health education and health promotion are concerned about changes that can
occur at the level of the individual, the organization, the community, or the
government. Many theoretical and conceptual approaches have been developed to
help explain health behavior and the methods that foster health behavior
change. Health Educators are challenged to develop learning experiences that
motivate learners to change their health behaviors. The Transtheoretical Model
is now one of the most widely used models of health behavior. Christian
teachers have equally adopted the theory in encouraging Adventist health
behaviors as well as enhancing academic performance.
The Adventist philosophy of education is the
integration of faith and learning. Thus, the purpose of this essay is to
introduce and adopt the Transtheoretical Model to change students¡¯ Christ-like
attitudes and actions. I want to focus specifically on Adventist health
behaviors called the
B. Definition of Health
Many people think of good health, which is the
absence of disease, pain, and disability. Or they consider health in terms of
vitality - being able to function with vigor. Or they think of longevity. Being
without illness, pain and disability, having vitality, and living long are part
of good health. But health is more than this.
The Definition of Health
According to the definition of World Health
Organization (WHO, 1978), health represents ¡°complete physical, mental, and
social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity.¡± Recent
definition of health adds two aspects-emotional and spiritual well being as
holistic health, which look at the whole person rather than the parts (Williams
and Knights, 1995). The view of holism can be found in Genesis 1: 27 – ¡°God
created man in His own image.¡± Seventh-Day Adventists believe that each human
being is a union of the body. Spirit, which ¡°function in close cooperation,
revealing an intensely sympathetic relationship between a person¡¯s spiritual,
mental and physical faculties. Deficiencies in one are will hamper the other
two.¡±(Seventh-day Adventist Believe¡¦, 1988. p 84).
218
Satan
is the originator of disease. Following Satan¡¯s way leads to disease and death
while following God¡¯s way lead to life and health. Therefore, a truly health¤Ë person from the Biblical
perspective is one who has physical, mental or intellectual, emotional, social
and spiritual well- being. As stated in 3 John 2, ¡° Beloved,
I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul
prospers,¡± a healthy life is the perfection of Christ-like actions. Healthy
life results in happiness. There is merit in thinking and acting positively,
but the Bible declares that true spiritual well-being begins deep inside us, then spreads to physical, mental, emotional and social well-being.
In Proverbs 15: 13 -15, ¡° A merry heart makes a
cheerful countenance, but sorrow of the heart the sprit is broken¡¦He who is of
a merry heart has continual feast.¡± ¡°Rejoice in the Lord always, ¡± Paul wrote from prison. ¡°Again I will say, rejoice!¡±
(Philippians 4: 4) Many studies show that a spiritual or religious life is
associated with better health and longevity (Matthews, Larson, and Barry,
1993).
The
five dimensions of health from the Biblical perspectives are as follows:
The Five Dimensions of Health
l Physical: Physical health means
three aspects: 1) functioning body systems and the absence of disease or
disability; 2) physical fitness; and 3) minimal exposure to abuse.
l Mental or intellectual: Mental health or
intellectual health means well-being in thinking, or cognition, as opposed to
feeling.
l Emotional: Emotional health is
concerned with well-being in feeling, as opposed to thinking.
l Social: Social health has to do
with one¡¯s well-being in interaction with others.
l Spiritual: Spiritual health could
be defined as one¡¯s ability to love or trust and to accept love God.
All five health dimensions overlap and affect
one another. Thus, improvements in one area of well-being may affect several
other areas. Trust in God, for example, may improve you mood and give you
spiritual energy that allows you to study more efficiently, lessen your study worries
and improve your social interactions.
The
goal of
C. Adventist Health Principles
Genesis states that God created all life. Man
was made from the dust of the ground. In Genesis 1: 29-30, instructions were
given to him to eat fruit, nuts, and grains. Then in Genesis 9: 3,4, man is allowed to eat flesh but not blood. Men were given
directives regarding Adventists diet and lifestyle that come from the Biblical
promises of Deuteronomy 7: 11, 12 and 15. Abstinence from blood and fat are
stated in Leviticus 7: 23-27.
219
The
eight laws of health, called to the
D. Purpose of Study
The
purpose of this essay is: 1) to introduce and adopt the Transtheoretical Model
to change students¡¯ Christ-like attitudes and actions such as, the
II. TRANSTHEORETICAL
MODEL
220
A. Circumstances That Led to the Development of the
Model
As early as the 1950's, there were already about
36 distinct systems of psychotherapy and by 1975, there were 130. At about the
time Dr. Prochaska was in school studying to be a psychotherapist, his father
died of alcoholism and depression. He was unable to help or understand why his
father died distrusting psychotherapy.
According to Dr. Prochaska's original book on Systems
of Psychotherapy: A Transtheoretical Analysis published
in 1979 (Prochaska, 1979), there were so many theories in the field of
psychotherapy that this encouraged him to pursue his own research. In this
book, he did a comparative analysis of 18 major theories of psychotherapy and
behavioral change such as consciousness raising from the Freudian school of
thought, contingency management from the Skinnerian tradition, and helping
relationships from the Rogerians. Thus, the term is called transtheoretical.
The
comparative analysis was limited to 18 systems because the other systems
"seem to be dying a natural death with age and are best left undisturbed
because they are so poorly developed that they have no theories of personality
or pathology, or because they are primarily variations on major themes that are
already included in the book. The final exclusion is less open to bias and that
is that no system was excluded if more than 3% of surveyed therapists
considered themselves followers of it," Prochaska (1979) wrote.
And
in 1994, Changing for Good was co-authored by Dr. Prochaska (Prochaska, Norcross,
& DiClemente, 1994). It was in the first chapter that he mentioned the
circumstances about his father's death that helped make him delve more into
psychotherapy, leading to the transtheoretical analysis. In this search for
common principles of change, instead of finding separate change processes in
each of the 18 leading systems of therapy, only 10 processes of change (the
mechanisms people use) were identified that can be applied to the level of
either the individual's experience or environment to produce the change in
behavior: consciousness raising, social liberation, dramatic relief (emotional
arousal), self-reevaluation, commitment, stimulus control, countering (or counter
conditioning), environmental control(environmental reevaluation), reward, and
helping relationships.