Behavioral Medicine

Description of the Strategy

Behavioral medicine is a term that first arose in the 1960s from the ashes of the psychosomatic medicine and liaison psychiatry movements. Psychosomatic medicine and liaison psychiatry involved the application of Freudian or psychodynamic principles (i.e., psychological forces that interact within an individual and are outside of conscious awareness) to traditionally medical problems. Similarly, behavioral medicine is the application of learning theory principles (i.e., focus on overt, observable behaviors) to traditional medical disorders, such as pain, obesity, and diabetes. The influential Yale Conference on Behavioral Medicine defined behavioral medicine as “the field concerned with the development of behavioral science knowledge and techniques relevant to the understanding of physical health and illness and the application of this knowledge and these ...