Behavioral Medicine and Primary Care
by Robert E. Feinstein and Steven Locke
We invite you to join us in in-depth discussion of the relationship between medical illnesses and behavior, stress, health psychology, self care, prevention, psychiatric illness, family, and work. Behavioral Medicine requires evidence based multidisciplinary collaboration between mental health and wellness professionals, and primary care physicians. We hope this forum will reflect this diversity. Above all, our discussions should be dynamic, offering very different perspectives, with the goal of integrating them into practical approaches and programs for working with our patients on improving their overall health. Possible topics might include:
Limitations of the disease oriented approach;
Approaches to the physician-patient relationship as described by writers like Michael Balint, George Engel, and Eric Kandel, and other models of healthcare from the integrative medicine or complementary care perspective;
Health risk appraisals;
Health, wellness, prevention, and self care;
Psycho-cardiology, psycho-oncology, psycho-nephrology, psycho immunology, HIV. Lyme, chronic fatigue;
Psychiatric illness as risk factor or as co-morbid features with medical illnesses (e.g. the depression-heart disease connection or binge eating disorder and obesity);
Smoking cessation and medical harm reduction for substances of abuse;
Lifestyle change including: nutrition, exercise, stress management techniques.
We hope clinicians at all levels and of many disciplines will participate in an environment where no questions are considered stupid and where common sense, kindness, and decency prevail.