Behavioral Medicine in Psychology

This regard was undertaken to question behavioral medicinal drug in psychology. In summary, this search examines the origins of behavioral treat, reviews the psychosocial and behavioral mechanisms, and describes concrete and practical implementations of behavioral know directge as they read been applied to medication. The purpose of this name is to fall outline main features of behavioral care for and its utilization in psychology. Behavioral medicinal drug is an interdisciplinary field of consider integrating the behavioral, social, and medical sciences (Miley, 1999, p.10).It grew out of behaviorism in the proterozoic s outcomeies and integrated psychology into physical unhealthiness. Schwartz and Weiss defined the term Behavioral medicine is the development and integration of biomedical, psychosocial and behavioral sciences knowledge and techniques relevant to health and illness and the application of this knowledge and these techniques to prevention, diagnosis, tr eatment, and rehabilitation (1978, p. 249-51).The area of behavioral medicine includes behavior-change programs which mould different health-related activities (self-examination for early symptoms of affection, following special diets, exercising and taking medicine) (Pierce, 2004, p. 380). nearly history should be devoted. Between the burst of enthusiasm for acquire establish therapies in the 1920s and their revival in the 1960s a not bad(p) deal of laboratory research and refinement of breeding theory was carried out by Clark Hull, B. F. Skinner, Neal milling machine, and others.By the 1950s, efforts to apply more than civilise learning theories to psychopathology became widespread. The early psychoanalytical approaches short gave way to experimental studies aimed at identifying psychological factors believed to wreak a major role in the development of specific corporate complaints. These initial attempts to link personality types to specific disease states were gene rally disappointing but nevertheless established a firm keister for interdisciplinary research in the advanced field of behavioral medicine.Rather than attempting to change difficulty behavior, however, these efforts mainly translated the clinical theory and lore of psychoanalysis into the language of learning theory. The most ambitious of these translations was Personality and Psychotherapy, by John Dollard and Neal milling machine (1950). Dedicating their discussion to Freud and Pavlov and their students, Dollard and Miller seek to combine the vitality of psychoanalysis, the rigor of the natural-science laboratory, and the facts of culture (p.3). They called psychotherapy a window to higher mental life and the action by which normality is created (pp. 3, 5). Accepting psychoanalytic views of psychopathology and its treatment, Dollard and Miller mainly sought to state these views in more rigorous terms derived from laboratory research on learning. Despite the basic contrasts listed originally, psychoanalytic and learning theories converged in several(prenominal) ways.They stated, both explained mental processes largely in terms of principles of association, whereby sequences of thoughts are governed by previous contiguities among ideas, similarity of content, and other shared features. This associationistic view of mental processes was the basis for the psychoanalytic technique of free association, as well as the psychoanalytic theory of mental symbols. Psychoanalytic theories and most learning theories postulated that reduction of organically based drives promoted the learning of of the essence(predicate) responses, attitudes, and emotions.Psychoanalytic theory and learning theories blamed childishness experiences for most adult psychopathology but did not actually streamlet the relationships that were assumed. Neal Miller began his career strongly influenced by his psychoanalytic training, so his to begin with relieve aceself reflects a more psychological approach to behavior. Impressed by his clinical observations of the effects of conflicting motivations, he searched for underlying mechanisms involved, which led to work in brain stimulant drug and control of involuntary responses utilizing biofeedback techniques.His research emphasizes the interrelationship between physiology, biochemistry, and pharmacology. Miller took his undergraduate training at the University of Washington, completed his masters microscope stage at Stanford University, and received his Ph. D. from Yale University in 1935. Trained as a psychoanalyst, he combined clinical observation and a broad line of research that led to such important contributions as the frustration-agression hypothesis and social learning theory.Searching for the underlying ca handlings of conflicting motivation, he moved into the area of brain stimulation and then to an interesting and highly controversial series of studies involving the control of involuntary responses utilizing biofeedback techniques. After a distinguished career at Yale and the Institute of human being Relations, he moved to Rockefeller University in 1966 where he continues his interests in physiology, biochemistry, and pharmacology. Professor Miller served as president of the Ameri stand Psychological Association in 1969.In 1969 Neal Miller, in an article in Science, summarized a series of studies in which, by the exercise of Skinnerian reinforcement strategies, he and his associates had adroit wildcats to bring a quash of internal bodily federal agencys seemingly under self-control. The bodily functions thus trained included beginning pressure, urine formation, watch rate, automobile trunk temperature, and bowel dis strains. unitedly with other demonstrations of a similar kind, often with human subjects, this work led to a new form of therapy called biofeedback.Using sophisticated equipment for monitoring and displaying to the patient the import to moment fluctuati ons in ph peerless line pressure, skin temperature, heart rate, muscle tension, blood volume, or brain waves, a host of investigations began to report the success in treatment by biofeedback and other self-conditioning methods of headache, muscle tension, high blood pressure, nervousness, Raynauds disease (in which ones finger tips and toes become so cold that they lose all blood circulation and bring on excruciating pain), tics, bedwetting, and a host of com comparabilityable disorders.A new subspecialty in medical psychology and medicine was being born. The name given to it was behavioral medicine. As this field has veritable its scope has increaseed. It now includes the fortune of patients who want to quit smoking, give up drugs, lose weight, take their insulin or follow the prescribed treatments for other conditions where therapy fails for lack of compliance to a pabulum that is known to be effective. It also includes individuals who are healthy and want to lodge so by jogg ing, eating low cholesterol and other more healthful foods, abstain from alcohol, and so on.A brief historical review of the developments in medicine and in psychology which led to the upshot of behavioral medicine and behavioral health as viable, interdisciplinary specialties is available elsewhere (Matarazzo, 1980, 1982). The emergence of health psychology as a vigorous new stop is a natural outcome of scientific and technological advances within psychology. observational and physiologic psychology have contributed greatly to this evolution, beginning with Pavlovs early work with dogs at the turn of the century. His concept of conditioned reflex provided the basis for a great deal of classical learning theory.In the 1920s, Walter Cannon introduced the concepts of homeostasis and fight versus flight. Neal Miller applied aspects of these earlier theories to an understanding of the role of conditioning in psychophysiological change and how certain aspects of the autonomic nervou s system could be controlled. The modern use of biofeedback treatment to memorize an individual how to control muscle tensions, blood pressure, and other physiological processes developed out of these earlier efforts. Psychophysiology made contributions to behavioral medicine.Psychophysiological applications to behavioral medicine typically involve the monitoring of physiological functions in relation to synchronic emotional and behavioral states. Originally, psychophysiological studies were confined to the laboratory or clinic, and explored the cardiovascular and neuroendocrine responses to stressors, individual differences in reaction patterns, or changes in physiological function with behavioral interventions. Laboratory studies remain the mainstay of psychophysiology, but the development of ambulant methods has increasingly led to investigations under everyday or naturalistic conditions.Describing psychophysiology as a method of studying relationships between physical respons es and current behavior places no limits on the nature of the physiological processes being monitored. Indeed, one of the characteristics of psychophysiology has been the development of technology to assess more and more sophisticated and precise aspects of cardiovascular function. In the behavioral epidemiological study, physiological measures are typically collected under office or clinic conditions on one or a few occasions, whereas psychophysiologists are predominantly concerned with changing interrelations between behavior and physiology.Psychophysiological research in early behavioral medicine was dominated by studies of biofeedback and the voluntary control of blood pressure and heart rate (Beatty & Legewie, 1977). Over the last years, mental stress testing in the laboratory has become the major research paradigm (Steptoe & Vogele, 1991). It has involved studies of many another(prenominal) clinic and high-risk groups, and assessments of a wide range of physiological proces ses in response to a variety of conditions, such as problem solving, stress interviews, and information-processing tasks.The methodology of mental stress testing in the laboratory has been thoroughly reviewed in various texts (Matthews, Weiss & Detre, 1986). Reservations concerning the reliability of laboratory assessments have largely been allayed by a new generation of investigations, indicating that, provided care is taken with physiological measurement and presidency of behavioral stimuli, reliable and consistent response patterns are observed. The psychophysiological treatment par excellence is biofeedback. Biofeedback is a research-based empirical approach, with greater emphasis on breeding of results and cautious examination of evidence.Yet biofeedback pursues the same goal as other automobile trunk therapies, that of using individual awareness and control over the body to lift personal potential, health, and growth. It brings together humanistic conceptions of mind and body with sophisticated electronic technology to produce powerful strategies for self-control over aware(p)ness, emotion, and physiology. The area of willing control of physiological activity has contributed significantly to the growing field of behavioral medicine and health psychology. The beginnings of biofeedback go back to the late 1960s.Kenneth Gaarder points out that biofeedback was not so much a discovery as it was an awareness which emerged from the Zeitgeist (Gaarder & Montgomery, 1979). many another(prenominal) researchers of the 1950s and 1960s can be cited as independent founders of biofeedback. For example, Hefferline conceptualized biofeedback as a powerful tool, perhaps more powerful than Gestalt awareness exercises, to expand body awareness and self-awareness (Knapp, 1986). As with other so-called departures in psychology, at that place were earlier examples. The primary training method developed and utilized in this learning process has been labeled biofeedbac k.Its theory grounded on the concept introduced by Elmer Green Every change in the physiological state is accompany by an appropriate change in the mental emotional state, conscious or unconscious, and conversely, every change in the mental emotional state, conscious or unconscious, is accompanied by an appropriate change in the physiological state. (Green, Green, & Walters, 1970, p. 3) This initial research activity began to stimulate more interest, among both the scientific community and the general public, in the area of biofeedback because of its many potentially important clinical and medical applications.For example, it would be therapeutically valuable if it was possible to thatched roof patients with hypertension how to refuse their blood pressure, or to teach patients with headaches how to control the vasodilation process involved in the pain phenomenon. Indeed, Birk (1973) was the individual who coined the term behavioral medicine to describe the application of a behavio ral treatment technique (biofeedback) that could be applied to medicine or medical problems (e. g. , headache pain).Each school of body therapy or body work presents a different manifestation of the implicit in(p) psychophysiological principle that we can intervene bodilyally and produce changes in emotion and relationship, and inversely, that we can intervene psychologically, with somatic consequences. Each of the body-therapy approaches emphasizes a dual psychological and somatic intervention, and each emphasizes breathing, muscular rigidity, and the physical blocking of memories and affective experiencing. In turn, each body therapy seeks to release the individual from physical inhibitions and to restore a encompassing psychophysiological selfregulation.The work of Alexander Graham Bell ( 1847-1922), the inventor of the telephone, with the deaf, and his interest in using the visible display of speech sound, either by marrow of manometric flames or by an early form of kymograp h, in order to facilitate the deaf to reproduce correct sounds, would seem to utilize feedback principles ( Bruce, 1973). However, it needed a dramatic event to focus attention on the area of feedback control. This event took place at the 1967 annual meeting of the Pavlovian Society of northwest America in the form of a report by Neal Miller (1968).He introduced a technique that his colleague, Jay Towill, had first devised. This involved immobilizing animals with D-tubo curarine, artificially respirating them, and with electrodes rigid in the so-called pleasure centers in the brain, operantly conditioning various physiological systems. For example, it was reported that the animal could learn, through operant conditioning, to increase or lower blood pressure, increase or decrease heart-rate, kidney flow, and so on. The reward was, in each case, a brief electric pulse delivered to the pleasure centres.The use of D-tubo curarine to produce paralysis of skeletal muscles was an attemp t to avoid the possibility that the animal was modifying its autonomic responses via voluntary activities, such as changes in muscle tension or breathing pattern or rate. Research papers soon followed, and in a series of studies carried out with Leo DiCara on the curarized rat, the slavish conditioning of heart-rate, blood-pressure, and renal blood-flow andin collaboration with A. Banuazizicontraction of the intestines, appeared to be demonstrated. Reports from other laboratories seemed to support Millers findings.