ABSTRACT
To frame this chapter, the reader is reminded of this book’s title: Clinical Psychology: A Modern Health Profession. Clinical psychologists assess and treat people with psychological disorders and also play a role in the treatment of a variety of physical diseases. In recognition of this fact, numerous psychological interventions and their content and outcomes, when applied to medical populations, have been described throughout chapters 10 and 13. For example, stress management approaches are useful for anxiety disorders but also for high blood pressure (Linden, 2006), and biofeedback can be used for anxiety reduction, as well as for neuromuscular rehabilitation or chronic pain conditions (Moss, 2007). The title contains both “health psychology” and “behavioral medicine” because the relevant literature is covered in a variety of journals with one or the other term in the title. In everyday reality, the research and clinical content covered by these areas is largely overlapping; many of the same researchers serve on the journals’ editorial boards and also contribute articles. Where these areas differ is that health psychology embraces research on healthy functioning more so than does the domain of behavioral medicine, which is somewhat more likely to cover clinical application issues.
