Behavioral medicine is an interdisciplinary field that focuses on the behavioral and psychosocial aspects of health and illness. The field comprises many psychologists, clinical and otherwise, along with physicians, nurses, pharmacists, dietitians, rehabilitation professionals, and epidemiologists (i.e., public health scientists who study the patterns and causes of disease and injury in populations of people). It has common roots with related fields, such as psychosomatic medicine and health psychology, but behavioral medicine has important distinctions from those domains. Since its origins in the 1970s, behavioral medicine has grown in scope and impact, largely due to the significance of behavior to major modern causes of death and disability, such as cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and accidents. Contrasted with the major debilitating and fatal diseases existing prior ...

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