Functional Analysis in Behavioral Medicine

Abstract

Behavior therapists must often design treatments for individual patients who present with a wide array of psychophysiological disorders and health problems. The functional analysis and functional analytic causal modeling is a learning-based, empirically focused assessment technique used to systematically gather, integrate, and summarize information about the form and function of a patient’s symptoms. A functional analytic case model can be a critical component of effective treatment design because most interventions attempt to modify relationships between causal factors and symptoms. The objectives of this paper are (a) to present a review of the conceptual foundations and essential procedures in the functional analysis; (b) to outline steps required to generate a functional analytic causal model; (c) to explain simple decisional and statistical procedures that can be used to counter intuitive errors; and (d) to demonstrate how functional analytic case models can be used to guide clinical practice and treatment design for persons presenting with disorders observed in medical settings.