Please follow instructions Health Psychology 4HW079 Health Psychology Semester 2 2019/20 Assessment Preparation & assignment details Learning Outcome 1 Demonstrate an understanding of key concepts...

HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY
OVERWEIGHT AND OBESITY
Table of Contents
Introduction    3
a) Providing a Rationale for Choosing Overweight and Obesity as a Significant Health Issue    3
b) Relevant Health Psychology Model    4
c) Extent to which The Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) helps in Understanding Overweight and Obesity    6
d) Extent to which This Model will help in Promoting Positive Behaviour Change    7
Conclusion    8
References    9
Introduction
Obesity and overweight are two worldwide health challenge that is caused due to abnormal deposition of fat. The overweight and obesity condition mostly observed to be associated with other medical condition that includes high blood pressure, heart disease, sleep disorders, diabetes and high level of cholesterol (Sheats et al. 2018). According to the doctors, the high rate of overweight and obesity is due to the change in the lifestyle of the population with unhealthy consumption of food as well as lack of physical activity (Scheelbeek et al. 2019). The current study will evaluate the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) in understanding the incidence of the obesity condition in the UK population.
a) Providing a Rationale for Choosing Overweight and Obesity as a Significant Health Issue
Obesity is a condition that has reached an epidemic condition globally affecting 2.8 million people in different parts of the world. As per the WHO (2017), around 23% of the women are obese while 20% of the male population is obese in the European countries. The condition has been identified as one of the risk factors causing cancer, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. Obesity according to certain researchers is a stigma. In the UK, 18.7% of the population experiences this stigma. It has been observed that this stigma leads to health inequalities and psychological consequences resulting in increased depression and anxiety. Further, this condition has also led to unhealthy consumption of food and avoidance of physical activity.
According to the estimations by Song et al. (2016), in the year 2016, 1.9 billion adults were overweight and 650 million were obese. The prevalence of obesity and overweight condition globally has tripled since the year 1975 to 2016. 41 million children who were under the age of 5 years were observed to be either overweight or obese in the UK (Scheelbeek et al. 2019). In addition, the urban settings of the middle- and low-income countries are also have contributed to increasing obesity and overweight condition. In the year 1975, only 4% of the total population was found to suffer from obesity and were overweight. However, by the end of 2016, the number has increased to 18% (Scheelbeek et al. 2019).
As per Segal, Huerta and Sassi (2019), most of the low, as well as middle-income countries, are facing this condition due to certain reasons. Although most of these low- and middle-income countries struggle with undernutrition and infectious diseases, the population were also observed to suffer from a non-communicable disease like obesity. The condition is particularly persistent in urban settings (Sheats et al. 2018). It is not rare to find two extreme condition like undernutrition and obesity to exist side by side within the same community. The condition has especially affected the young, infant and prenatal children who were exposed to high salt, high sugar and fat-containing food that had low quality. The impact of obesity stigma has affected the children the most, as they were found to have lower self-esteem, leading to depression, poor confidence level and body image.
Hence, obesity and the overweight condition have been considered as a health issue because the levels of one's exercise and eating determine the incidence of the condition and its risk of morbidity in any individual. Type 2 diabetes is another condition that has been recorded in a maximum number of obese individuals. As stated by Ajayi et al. (2016), around 13% of the individuals in the UK suffering from T2D were observed to be below 20 years of age. Among this 40 % of the below 20 years of old individuals, the T2D are yet not diagnosed. As per WHO, the changes in the environmental and the lifestyle has contributed to obesity and have created difficulty for the population to adhere to healthy behaviour. A self-monitoring with behavioural therapy is in need so that the high incidence of overweight and obesity condition can be brought under control. (Gregg & Shaw, 2017)
b) Relevant Health Psychology Model
There had been an increase in the prevalence of obesity and overweight among the adolescents and children (Jun & Arendt, 2016). Overweight and obesity have been observed to be closely associated with conditions such as hypertension, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) helps in efficiently explaining the perceived control of behaviour so that the attitude of the people can be influenced in enhancing the level of motivation amongst the obese people (Cheng et al. 2019).
The TPB is a well-known psychosocial health model that explains the cognitive processes that helps in predicting the behavioural intention of an individual. One of the central focus of the TPB model is to explain a particular behaviour. One of the behavioural intentions includes understanding the extent an individual is willing to put any effort to change or perform any behaviour. As stated by Jun and Arendt (2016), the TPB model depends on three independent aspects that helps in the determination of behavioural intention.
The first aspect is the attitude of the individual towards a behaviour. This can be referred as belief that is been created based on the consequences of certain behaviours. Whether this behaviour will lead to a desired consequence depends on the positive or negative behaviour, on which the outcomes depend.
The second aspect is the subjective norm, which is based on the perceived social...