Regulating affective responses to acute stress has the potential to improve health, performance, and well-being outcomes. Using the biopsychosocial (BPS) model of challenge and threat as an organizing framework, we review how appraisals inform affective responses and highlight research that demonstrates how appraisals can be used as regulatory…

Examined relative and combined effectiveness of behavior therapy and pharmacotherapy in 62 severe, chronic agoraphobics. Identified differential temporal response and treatment patterns across psychophysiological domains. Synchrony/desynchrony phenomena yielded significant findings with regard to process and clinical outcome status. Exploratory…

Many tinnitus sufferers believe that their tinnitus has an organic basis and thus seek medical rather than psychological treatments. Tinnitus has been found to be associated with negative appraisal, dysfunctional attention shift, and heightened psychophysiological arousal, so cognitive-behavioral interventions and biofeedback are commonly…

The multimodal model uses the acronym BASIC ID to identify areas of client functioning that frequently need to be treated. The D mode includes drugs, diet, and other physiological factors. This article describes the evolution of the D mode and shows the importance of a physiological dimension to multimodal counseling. (Author)

Presence or absence of tension release significantly influenced the number of relaxation cycles necessary to produce reports of deep relaxation, frequency of practice, and successfulness of eliminating daily tension at follow-up. Subject's ability to reduce physiological activity by a procedure contributed to reductions in subjective tension.…

Subjects responded to questionnaires and rated events in the Social Readjustment Rating Scale. Some were given psychophysical training before rating events. Training did not have significant effect on ratings. Stressfulness ratings were consistently higher than those of social readjustment. Data suggest this effect interacted with the events…

Notes that of the treatments attempted for nocturnal enuresis, pharmacotherapy, individual psychotherapy, and behavioral conditioning, the most effective is behavioral conditioning with a urine alarm. Reviews the enuresis literature and provides recommendations for use of the urine alarm approach. (Author/ABB)

The influence of personal control on reactions to shock differed as a function of the type of control and of the combination of control conditions. Behavioral control in the presence of information (cognitive control) reduced stress, whereas behavioral control in the absence of information augmented stress. (Author)

The previous article in this series introduced the triune brain, the three components of which handle specialized life tasks. The survival brain, or brain stem, directs automatic physiological functions, such as heartbeat and breathing, and mobilizes fight/flight behaviour in times of threat. The emotional (or limbic) brain activates positive or…

The use of neuroleptic medicine in the treatment of schizophrenia is often predicated on the goal of eliminating psychotic symptoms. Use of neuroleptics, however, may produce unfortunate side effects. A case is presented which illustrates the time-limited use of neuroleptics. (JN)

Contains 18 articles discussing the uses of behavioral medicine in such areas as obesity, smoking, hypertension, and headache. Reviews include discussions of behavioral medicine and insomnia, chronic pain, asthma, peripheral vascular disease, and coronary-prone behavior. Newly emerging topics include gastrointestinal disorders, arthritis,…

Treated test-anxious college students with cognitive behavior therapy, relaxation training, and thermal biofeedback training. Experimental subjects also received in vivo distraction coping training. Overall program efficacy was demonstrated by reductions in anxiety and increases in rationality of personal belief systems. In vivo training did not…