Fall semester topics
- Week 36. Benefits of volunteer work
- Week 37. Living with learning disabilities
- Week 38. Personality disorders
- Week 39. Setting up healthy boundaries
- Week 40. Learning to improve concentration
- Week 41. Suicide prevention – learning to help
- Week 42. Phobias – dealing with fears
- Week 43. Sleep disorders
- Week 44. Sexuality – the biochemistry
- Week 45. Addictive relationships
- Week 46. UNESCO day of tolerance
- Week 47. Improving self-confidence
- Week 48. Helping friends or others in distress
- Week 49. World AIDS day – living with illness
- Week 50. Value based decision making
- Week 51. Being assertive in a diverse world
- Week 52. Spirituality – spiritual growth
- Week 1. Dynamics of intro- & extraverts
- Week 2. Orientation – a career that fits!
- Week 3. Living in a foreign country
- Week 4. Overcoming test anxiety
- Week 5. Understanding dysfunction in a family
- Week 6. Smoking – giving up methods
- Week 7. Valentine’s day – commitment
- Week 8. Communication – focusing on skills
- Week 9. Domestic violence
- Week 10. Work-life balance – expectations
- Week 11. Loneliness and feeling alone
- Week 12. Understanding of joy and happiness
- Week 13. Racial discrimination
- Week 14. PTSD
- Week 15. World health day
- Week 16. Panic disorders
- Week 17. Academic honesty – authenticity
- Week 18. Death and dying
- Week 19. Job interviews – good impression
- Week 20. Characteristic of sound families
- Week 21. Celebrating cultural diversity
- Week 22. Growing up in a single parent home
- Week 23. Act of love (self and others)
- Week 24. Focusing on personality tests
- Week 25. Childhood traumas
- Week 26. Relating to the elderly
- Week 27. Grief – dealing with loss
- Week 28. Drug and substance abuse
- Week 29. Dealing with depression
- Week 30. Procrastination
- Week 31. Recovering from shame and guilt
- Week 32. Perfectionism
- Week 33. First generation university students
- Week 34. Compulsive obsessive behaviors
- Week 35. Body image – eating disorders
- Week 36. School bullying – mobbing concerns
Spring semester topics
Smoking – giving up methods
Smoking is more than a simple habit
Health psychology looks at the complex array of biological, social and psychological factors that influence our health and illness-related behaviour. Smoking is a biological addiction, with nicotine as addictive as cocaine and heroin. However, there is more to being hooked on cigarettes than the physical addiction to nicotine. Social learning theory describes how we learn by example from others. We are strongly influenced by our parents, and other people we look up to, such as peers, actors and pop stars. This can lead us to emulate their behaviour and try smoking. Most people will tell you that there first cigarette was not nice tasting. They may have even felt sick or choked. But at the same time there is an almost immediate effect on their brains with those first cigarettes, which the brain craves more of, so they keep smoking to get this reward. Later we learn to associate all aspects of smoking – carrying the packet, playing with their lighter, pulling the cigarette out of the packet, taking that first draw on the lit cigarette, the hand-to-mouth arm action of smoking and so on with other activities such as drinking coffee, speaking on the phone, going to the pub, etc. Source.
Recommended books
Beattie, Melody. 1992. Co-Dependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself (2nd edition). Center City, Minnesota: Hazelden Foundation.
Beattie, Melody. 1989. Beyond Co-Dependency. Center City, Minnesota: Hazelden Foundation.
Black, Claudia. 2001. It Will Never Happen to Me: Growing Up with Addiction as Youngsters, Adolescents, Adults (2nd edition, revised). Bainbridge Island, WA: MAC Publishing.
Lerner, Harriett Goldhor. 2001. The Dance of Anger. New York, NY: Quill Harper Collins.