Dr Martine Robson

BA English and French

BSc (Honours) Psychology

PGCTHE

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

PhD psychology

Module Coordinator

• AB2 21st Century Self: Critical and Constructionist Approaches to Contemporary Personhood (PS31720)
• AB1 Couples therapy and romantic relationships in practice (PS32320)

Tutor

• AB1 Counselling Research Project (PS33240)
• AB1 Forensic Psychology Dissertation (PS33340)
• AB1 Personal Development and Organisational Behaviour (PS11710)
• AB1 Psychology Research Project for Joint Honours (PS34120)
• AB1 Psychology Research Project for Single Honours (PS33140)
• AB1 The Psychology of Language (PS20420)

• Tuesday 2p.m.-4p.m.

Couples' management of lifestyle change after diagnosis with coronary heart disease.

Coronary heart disease (CHD) is the leading cause of death globally (WHO, 2014). In general, people in long-term relationships have lower incidence of and better recovery from heart attacks and cardiac surgery than those who live alone (Idler, Boulifard, & Contrada, 2012). Changes in behaviours relating to diet, exercise and smoking are associated with better health outcomes for patients with CHD, with people in long-term relationships more likely to make these changes. Such benefits are not universal, however. Couples' day-to-day health interactions may account for some the complexity of these health and ill-health concordances (Lewis & Butterfield, 2007), although these micro-level processes are not well understood. My PhD examines how couples talk about and manage the lifestyle changes that are advised after a partner is diagnosed with CHD. Participating couples, recruited in the first two weeksafter a new diagnosis, were interviewed once a month for three months over the course of their recovery. From a critical health perspective, I examine how couples negotiate lifestyle advice and information in a context of neoliberal understandings of and focus upon health. Using a discursive approach, I identify the ways in which couples adopt, resist and transform wider social discourses of health, and the dynamics and complexities of health-advice giving and receiving within intimate relationships.