Rowan University Mental Health Modify Behavior Stage Essay

The project will consist of an analysis of a personal health behavior that you would like to change, and the actual implementation for that change. Your reflections will be supported by at least 5-6 relevant journal articles, which will be turned in along with the final 10-12 page paper (12-pt Times New Roman, double-spaced). Following are the aspects which you should address.

1. Choose a behavior that you would like to modify, and begin a self-observation/self-monitoring of that behavior, as per cognitive-behavioral therapy. You do not need to make elaborate journal entries, a few lines about the circumstances surrounding your performance of the behavior will be fine. Consider this your baseline. At the end of the class, you will a) turn in all of your journal entries or b) turn in a summary of the entries, whichever is best for you.

1. Visit Google Scholar or Rowan Campbell Library to do a literature search on your topic, including the best methods of behavior change for the problem you have selected. You are looking for scientific, peer-reviewed literature here. Any of the journals the library has are fine (psychological, medical, etc.). Refer to the Resources section above. For Internet sources, mere articles are insufficient. In order to qualify as scientific, the work you select must be peer-reviewed. Five to six articles from any relevant source(s) will be fine. You will describe and summarize the articles, providing details about the theoretical rationale as well as the empirical evidence that supports or fails to support the theories. You might want to critique methods, strengths or limitations, etc.

1. Based upon the research, develop and describe in detail the intervention that you will undertake to modify the problem behavior. Be as specific as possible, and refer back to the articles you have chosen in order to highlight the relationship of your change program to the information that exists in the literature.

1. You will implement your behavior change plan, and although we don’t have a very long time in which to do so, it’s a start, and should give you some insight into how well your self-modification plan will work. The final phase of your paper is therefore an analysis of how well things are going with your plan and what might need to be modified to insure your success.

1. Remember that any health-related behavior is applicable to this project: weight loss or management, smoking cessation, cutting back on alcohol, stress management, exercise initiation.

The final paper needs to conform to 7th edition APA style (see above Resources section) and needs to adequately address the provided the areas noted above.

One suggestion for how to organize the paper:

• Section 1: Statement regarding the behavior you wish to modify, and your reasons for wanting to do so.
• Section 2: Summary of self-monitoring phase (actual journal entries scanned in, or a 1-2 page summary of your entries
• Section 3: Review of empirical articles. What did the authors of the research do and why? What research methodology did they use and who were the participants? What were the general results (no need to go overboard with statistical detail). What do the results mean in terms of what you are trying to accomplish? Also, you can be critical of their methods, any strengths or limitations, etc.
• Section 4: Describe the behavior change plan you have developed based upon your knowledge, and how you have implemented the plan.
• Section 5: Your evaluation of the change implementation and how well it has worked. How successful have you been and what obstacles did you encounter? Do you plan to continue with your change efforts? If so, are there aspects of your program that you need to or plan to modify in order to obtain the best results?