Behavioral medicine (BM) is a newly developing field of study which integrates behavioral, psychosocial, and biomedical concepts to prevent, diagnose, and treat patients with psychosomatic disorders. The practice of BM targets the relation between how both thought and behavior can affect mental and physical health.
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Evolution of Behavioral Medicine
BM emerged in the late 19th century as a subordinate of psychosomatic medicine. The psychoanalysis therapists recognized that behavioral patterns cause most medical disorders. This finding resulted in the evolution of BM. In 1975, the first research laboratory was created at Stanford to analyze behavioral medicine. The contribution from the Yale conference on Behavioral Medicine led to the official launch of the field in the year 1977. After 1982, greater investments in research began, leading to the advancement of organized study in BM.
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Therapy Programs of Behavioral Medicine
Behavioral therapy
It is a response-based therapy that helps individuals acquire new positive behaviors that either decrease the severity of or eradicate mental conditions such as addiction, anxiety, phobias, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. It has two basic techniques.
- Classical conditioning: This principle of behavior therapy is normally known as applied behavioral analysis, which employs several methods to attain a change in behavior.
- Flooding: Flooding is commonly known as extended exposure treatment and has been effective for phobias and anxiety. For example, if an individual is afraid of dogs, he is exposed to dogs for long periods to reduce the intensity of the fear.
- Desensitization: Individuals are asked to list the particular situations or things that make them extremely sensitive. Based on this list, the therapist teaches relaxation techniques, which, when practiced regularly, helps to overcome hypersensitivity.
- Aversion therapy uses substances or techniques that produce an antagonistic effect on unwanted behaviors in many ways. For example, some medications produce side effects such as nausea, vomiting, and severe headaches when ingested along with alcohol. These medications are sometimes prescribed for alcohol addicts as a means of helping them to give up the undesirable alcoholism behavior as a result of the adverse reactions caused by the drug-alcohol binding.
- Operant conditioning: This theory has given rise to the following schemes for the management of behavior:
- Reinforcement concept: The therapist either rewards an individual due to the desired behavior change or imposes a penalty for not altering the undesirable behavior.
- Modeling: A good behavioral model is fixed as the target to which individual aims to get rid of unwanted behavior. The model might be a therapist or any other person close to the patient.
- Extinction: This theory suggests that anxiety reduction results from repeated encounters with anxiety-raising situations without unpleasant results.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
CBT is a type of psychotherapy that is commonly known as talk treatment. It combines the disciplines of psychotherapy and behavioral therapy. This therapy aims to change the motif of thoughts that affects the behavior and feelings of a person. CBT is beneficial for persons with mental disorders such as depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, eating disorder, addiction, and insomnia.
In a typical CBT session, the following things may happen:
- the patient and therapist interact about mental problems like anger which the patient experiences
- the therapist teaches new skills that include biofeedback and relaxation techniques for the management of mental symptoms faced by the person
- the patient has to practice the learned skills at home and apply them in day-to-day life.
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT)
Since this is a type of CBT pursues the same procedure that helps to transform negative thinking patterns into positive thoughts leading to desirable behaviors. DBT additionally creates a psychosocial environment for individuals to practice managing their emotions and change their behavior. It was found effective for individuals with eating disorders, substance dependence, and depression.
Biofeedback therapy
During this type of therapy, the therapist connects electrodes to the patient’s skin to detect the range of mental activities associated with irregular body functions. The therapy enables the person to control involuntary body functions such as the heart rate and muscle tension through relaxation techniques. It is effective in managing many chronic health problems and stress-related illnesses.
Integrative Therapies of Behavioral Medicine
Integrative therapy is the combination of supportive therapies with other therapies like CBT and behavioral therapy to provide effective rehabilitation for patients with psychosomatic disorders.
Relaxation training
This training helps calm a person to achieve a state of reduced stress, pain, and anxiety. It includes progressive muscle relaxation, deep breathing, creative visualization, or listening to music.
Mindfulness therapy
This therapy focuses on the power of meditation to target the reduction of the recurrence of symptoms in those who are vulnerable to repeated episodes. The therapy helps address difficult situations by creating an increased awareness of one’s surroundings and interior milieu, which helps the individual act with less emotion.
Distress tolerance
This skill educates patients to tolerate the pain during difficult situations through distraction techniques.
Cerebral blood flow training
This training increases the performance and functioning of the brain by enabling improved blood flow to specific regions of the brain.
References
Further Reading