Behavioral medicine

The Behavioral medicine is a sub-area of ​​behavior therapy and emerged from it. It researches health behavior in the area of ​​all therapeutic measures and develops knowledge about the associated developments, techniques, treatments, diagnoses and rehabilitation, through which the sick person learns to deal with his illness.

What is behavioral medicine?

Behavioral therapeutic measures are based on the knowledge that disturbed behavior can be learned, but also unlearned again. This research area began with learning theory, which set up hypotheses and models to describe the complexity of learning processes on a psychological basis and to interpret it using a wide variety of theories.

The founder was the American psychologist John B. Watson with his school of behaviorism. From this, behavioral medical concepts were formed that were based on biomedical principles and specifically approached the development of diseases through learning-theoretical methods.

Initially, the view was expressed that internal processes could not be seen through for an outsider and should therefore not be analyzed. Depth psychology was soon opposed by behavior therapy, which did not require the first person of the ego, but the perspective from the third person as a common step to consider and interpret a situation.

The basic idea was that health-damaging behavior should be learned, one of the most important, because it also means that behavioral medicine measures and therapies can counteract this. Behavioral medicine thus represents an experimental, scientific field that determines, predicts and controls behavior through observation and comparison. In this way, symptoms of mental disorders should be specifically identified and treated, but at the same time the patient's ability to act should be expanded.

Consideration is not placed so much on the mental processes, but rather behavioral medical techniques are developed that are intended to help those affected to understand themselves and to control themselves. The present circumstances play a bigger role than events in the past.

Intervention programs for the treatment of disorders or illnesses form the basis, while under these conditions research is carried out into the relationship between psychological and somatic processes and the resulting clinical picture. Problematic behavior is primarily based on learning processes and is reversed or changed by such processes. The intervention programs are adapted to the individual problems of a person without investigating the causes or the real origin that is responsible for a possible psychological disorder. Such behavioral medical measures are particularly successful in less complex mental disorders.

Treatments & therapies

There are therefore no special standard programs in behavioral medicine, but some models and procedures should be emphasized. This includes the multi-causal conditional model.

This presupposes that body and mind are not viewed as separate from one another, but that all psychological processes can be measured and explained via the electrochemical process in the brain. Every psychological process thus causes neurophysiological changes.

The knowledge gained in this way is based on findings from the field of psychophysiology, in the research of stress and emotions. Since there is an obvious connection between neuroendocrine activity, cognitive operations, cortical and subcortical activities, and subjective experience, behavioral medicine can use these as a guide to explain and investigate an interaction between the levels. In this way, new therapy concepts were developed that were used not only for psychological disorders, but also for physical complaints or chronic pain.

Before the psychosocial and physical form of the disease is examined, behavioral medicine also makes a diagnosis and behavioral analysis of the patient in order to be able to respond to them individually. One form of this is the SORKC model.

This is a behavioral model after the psychologist B. F. Skinner, who invented programmed learning, and was expanded by Frederick Kanfer. It describes the basis of five determinants in the learning process and thus serves to objectively check the therapeutic effects. The model implies that a stimulus affects an organism, causing an emotional response. This in turn results in an action that z. B. takes place as a countermeasure or displacement. If the situation occurs more often, behaviors develop, which in turn lead to behavioral disorders and diseases that are to be combated by counter-behavior or changes in the stimulus.

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Diagnosis & examination methods

An essential aspect in behavioral medicine is the patient's own implementation of the concepts. For this, the subjective perception of the symptoms is strengthened and the processing of the disease is checked by means of psychometric tests and surveys. In this way, self-perception of the person concerned is trained so that z. For example, keeping a diary is an important processing step during therapy. The patient should learn to subjectively interpret and assess his own behavior and the disorder.

A special procedure in behavioral medicine is exposure therapy, which is based on the knowledge gained from classical conditioning. Especially with panic and obsessive-compulsive disorders or anxiety and phobias, this method is used in different ways, through which the person concerned confronts himself with his fears. These include procedures such as systematic desensitization, fear management training, flooding, a form of overstimulation and direct confrontation, and the screen technique.

Behavioral medicine starts at three points in the disease process. She looks at the stimuli, the reaction to them and the resulting disturbance. If the stimuli lead to increased symptoms, it is possible for the patient to control the occurrence of the stimuli and ultimately to avoid them.