Definition of Behavioral Medicine
INTRODUCTION: HEALTH AND BEHAVIOR
 Changes in thoughts, emotions, behavior and lifestyle can improve health, prevent illness, and reduce symptoms of illness. More than twenty-five years of research, clinical practice, and community-based interventions in the field of behavioral medicine have shown that such changes can help people feel better physically and emotionally, improve their health, increase their self-care and health maintenance skills, increase empowerment, and improve their ability to live fulfilled lives with chronic pain and illness. Behavioral medicine interventions also can improve the effectiveness of medical care, can help to reduce over-reliance on the health care system, and can reduce many costs associated with medical care.
HYPNOTHERAPY AND BEHAVIORAL MEDICINE
Hypnotherapy is one of the most effective methods for working with people to harness the power of their minds to improve health and well being. Hypnotherapy incorporates many of the other methods of behavioral medicine and brings the power house of the subconscious mind to bear on resolving problems and achieving goals.
DEFINITION OF BEHAVIORAL MEDICINE AND RELATED FIELDS
 Behavioral medicine is the interdisciplinary field concerned with psychosocial aspects of illness, health and healing. It focuses on promotion and maintenance of health and wellness through development and application of behavioral and psychosocial theories and methods, and their integration with biomedical science. The behavioral medicine approach assumes that promoting mental, emotional and spiritual well being promotes physical well being.
Methods of behavioral medicine: include psychotherapy (including cognitive behavioral therapy), education, meditation, relaxation training, hypnosis, biofeedback, and energy medicine.
Related and overlapping areas: some areas included in and overlapping with behavioral medicine include:
Mind-Body Medicine: the field which covers the understanding and use of non-medical therapies to harness the mind in order to activate the innate healing capacity of the body.
Behavioral Health: the study and application of behavioral and psychosocial theories and methods in order to facilitate behaviors that increase health and prevention of illness and dysfunction. It involves promoting a philosophy of individual responsibility for health and overall well being. There are several areas that behavioral health can address, including smoking cessation, weight loss, exercise, medication compliance, reduction of high risk behavior, increased appropriate contact with health care providers (e.g. pregnancy checks, dental check-ups).
Psychosomatic Medicine: the study of how illnesses and physical disabilities are caused and/or maintained by psychological dynamics. It includes the study psychological and emotional factors in functional/psychogenic conditions (no biological organic basis) and organic conditions. The field was founded on Freud's psychoanalytic theory and the idea that personality traits and unconscious conflicts are associated with development of specific illnesses. Today, psychosomatic medicine has a much broader scope, althoughit is still burdened by popular misconceptions that it tends to dismisses people’s illnesses as being “all in their head.” There is much overlap between behavioral medicine and psychosomatic medicine.
Health Psychology: all of the theory and methods associated with the discipline of psychology that are relevant to understanding the relationship between thoughts, emotions, behavior, and social context and health and illness. Health psychology addresses the roles of thoughts, emotions, behavior, and social context in health promotion and maintenance, illness prevention and treatment, as well as in understanding etiology/causes of health and illness. Health psychology is a broad field which encompasses many of the activities of psychologists who work in the area of health and behavioral medicine. There is much overlap with behavioral medicine, and some believe the two terms create an artificial separation.
SOME AREAS OF BEHAVIORAL MEDICINE RESEARCH AND INTERVENTION
Behavioral medicine has applications to many areas of health, such as: adolescent health, aging, anxiety, arthritis, asthma, cancer, cardiovascular disease (heart disease, hypertension, stroke), children's health, chronic pain, cystic fibrosis, dep ression, diabetes, disease-related pain, eating disorders, environmental health, headaches, HIV/AIDS, incontinence, insomnia, low back pain, minority health, myofascial pain, obesity, public health, pulmonary disease, quality of life, hospice, rehabilitation, sexually transmitted diseases, social support, sports medicine, substance abuse (alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs), women's health.
RESEARCH DOCUMENTED HEALTH EFFECTS OF BEHAVIORAL MEDICINE INTERVENTIONS
Research has documented many health effects of behavioral medicine interventions. These effects include prevention of disease onset; lowered blood pressure; lowered serum cholesterol; reduced body fat; reversed atherosclerosis; decreased pain; reduced surgical complications; decreased complications of pregnancy; enhanced immune response; increase relaxation; increase functional capacity; improve sleep; improve productivity at work and school; improve strength, endurance, and mobility; improve quality of life.
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