Behavioral medicine

Behavioral medicine brings together insights from biology, behavior, psychology, and social sciences to understand health and illness. The sciences it draws on include epidemiology, anthropology, sociology, psychology, physiology, pharmacology, nutrition, neuroanatomy, endocrinology, and immunology. While often mistakenly used as a synonym for health psychology, the two are not the same. Health psychology focuses more narrowly on psychology’s role within behavioral medicine and behavioral health. Behavioral medicine, in contrast, also covers applied psychophysiological therapies like biofeedback, hypnosis, and bio-behavioral treatment of physical disorders, along with aspects of occupational therapy, rehabilitation medicine, physiatry, and preventive medicine.

The field has become especially relevant today because many major health problems are now seen as behavioral rather than purely medical. Smoking, a sedentary lifestyle, and substance use disorders, for instance, are key factors in the leading causes of death. Practitioners include qualified nurses, social workers, psychologists, and physicians (including medical students and residents), who often act as agents of behavioral change even within their medical roles.

Instead of relying solely on the medical model—which defines illness as a biological deviation from normal functioning—behavioral medicine uses the biopsychosocial model. This approach incorporates biological, psychological, and social elements into understanding and treating disease.

**Origins and history**

The idea that mind and body are connected appears in writings from the earliest civilizations, and this is the core concept behind behavioral medicine. The now-obsolete field of psychosomatic medicine was an academic predecessor. In its modern form, behavioral medicine emerged in the 1970s. The term first appeared in a 1973 book by Lee Birk titled *Biofeedback: Behavioral Medicine*, and in the names of two clinical research units founded that same year: the Center for Behavioral Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, established by Ovide F. Pomerleau and John Paul Brady, and the Laboratory for the Study of Behavioral Medicine at Stanford University, founded by William Stewart Agras in 1974. The field quickly grew, and research into how behavior, physiology, and biochemistry interact with health and illness gained prominence under