regional medical center: New Program For Helping With Self-Image

New Program For Helping With Self-Image

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Main Category: Psychology / Psychiatry
Article Date: 28 May 2012 - 14:00 PDT

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A new program designed by researchers at the Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology enables people to learn to love their bodies and faces, improving a person's physical self-concept.

Similar initiatives are already routinely applied in educational establishments and high schools. However, this program is different in so far that it does not involve physical exercise, but rather focuses on training people's cognitive side. The study, called Mirate bien (Take a good look at yourself) restructures people's perceptions in order to give them a more realistic awareness of their image.

One of the program designers, Inge Axpe submitted a thesis on this subject and on a pilot program the researchers conducted at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). The study is called 'Diseno y evaluacion de un programa para la mejora del autoconcepto fÃsico' (Design and evaluation of a program designed to improve physical self-concept) and was published in the journal Revista de PsicodidÃ¡ctica. The program was assessed and validated by a panel of 21 judges, consisting of ten experts and eleven non-experts before it was applied to 813 students. 495 students were actively involved in the study, whilst the remainder made up the control population.

Although the program is designed for children in primary or secondary education, testing of the program was conducted on students from the University School of Teacher Training in Leioa (Bizkaia, Basque Country), as these will be the future teachers of the children. Axpe believes that it is important that they undergo practical classes in improving their own physical self-concept before they start teaching themselves.

She says: "That way they get to know all the variables relating to this matter and become aware of how important the variables are for young people, and how, as future teachers, they will, in turn, be able to help the youngsters work on them."

To explain what the cognitive perspective contains, Axpe uses the example of eating disorders. For instance, a young person with bulimia may be attractive and engage in physical activities, yet still have a very low physical concept of themselves. The programs applied in schools encourage physical activity and a balanced diet, which is of no use in this incident. Telling a young person they are bulimic and unhealthy fails to achieve anything, as the problem is internal. In order to address this problem, the program needs to focus on the inadequacy of the approach but not the eating disorder itself.

In answer to the question of how this can be achieved, the researchers explain:

"It is no easy task, because these thoughts are deeply ingrained, but there are activities that allow them to be presented: one needs to get over to the young people the idea that we tend to interpret information in a very specific way. For example, we are affected by the things we are told externally, but the impact depends on our interpretation. Young people need to know that we have these tendencies, and that if we do not try to change them, we won't be able to change anything else."

The program is split into separate stages, each with a similar working procedure, that consist of physical activities, healthy habits, external influences, etc. The first step is to spark the students' interest through reading texts and inviting them to ask questions, which encourages them to reflect. The second step could be the physical activity phase in which the students reveal whether they are physically active, which reveals their situation during this stage of the program. The program then shows a list of unsuitable behaviors that are intended to raise the young person's awareness through simple examples.

Axpe states that a good example of inadequate thought is to generalize the defects, saying:

"That is the case of someone who thinks that his or her nose is too big, and when generalizing this in an exaggerated way, says he or she is ugly. We offer them alternatives: we tell the young person that we should try and change that, and that he or she may not be happy with his or her nose, but he or she does have some lovely eyes."

The program basically aims to cognitively restructure and enable changes in the way people view themselves.

The pilot program revealed that the participants show signs of improvement in their physical self-concept, and although the changes are not statistically relevant, they are nevertheless noteworthy. Axpe highlights the program's potential as an awareness-building tool for those that have an inadequate physical self-concept, the factors that cause this and the potential of changing it.

Axpe believes that including programs like this should be an essential training component for university students that want to become teachers. She also believes that the program can be adapted for use in children and teenagers, and concludes: "It would need adaptations for all the ages. That is in fact our aim: to shape it, adapt the materials, and evaluate them as they are implemented."

Written By Petra Rattue
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today

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