Behavioral Medicine: A New Perspective in the Field of Health

Abstract

The interest of the Health Sciences and Psychology in the relationships between illness and a person’s behavior is certainly not late. Questions and concerns about the interaction between a biological disorder and the way one lives, feels, thinks, etc. the person who suffers, have occupied both medicine and clinical-psychological research and practice for many years. But mainly within the framework of a very new interdisciplinary direction (behavioral medicine – Verhal-tensmedizin), a more thorough investigation of the importance of behavior for the genesis and formation of many diseases and disorders – mental and/or physical – began [1,2]. Forerunners of this direction, with which Behavioral Medicine often collaborates even now, are Psychosomatic Medicine and Medical Psychology. These branches of course emphasize the importance of behavioral factors around health and disease issues, but they give different weight to their investigations, they mainly have a different theoretical background and do not deal so thoroughly with the experimental investigation of the importance of behavior for etiology, form, course and treatment of various diseases [1,2].