Organizational Psychology

In the second half of the twentieth century, health psychology took one of the leading positions in the general list of the most relevant areas of development of psychological science. The initial problem posed in the article is the current discrepancy between the demand for health psychology and the lack of human resources (health psychologists) focused on the development of this scientific direction. The purpose of this work is to reveal, in accordance with the concept of a person’s life path, a first approximation of the list of practical tasks, the solution of which may be included in the professional competence of health psychologists in Russia. The authors‘ ideas are based on the concept of a healthy personality, the main provisions of which were first formulated in Russian science by famous psychiatrists and psychologists S. S. Korsakov, I. A. Sikorsky, V. M. Bekhterev, as well as western representatives of humanistic psychology G. Allport, K. Rogers, A. Maslow, and E. Fromm. There view includes the stages of the perinatal period, prеschool and school age, education in secondary vocational and higher educational institutions, professional activity and retirement. Each stage of human development is considered by the authors as an independent one and assumes the variability of lifestyle strategies in the overall structure of health, and hence the practice of forming healthy behavior. The article for the first time consistently considers the main features and risks of each stage of the life path, defines the range of professional tasks of a health psychologist. At the end of the work, the question is raised about the options for professional training of these specialists in higher education institutions.