Behavior and Medicine - Softcover

Danny Wedding

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0889373051 ISBN 13: 9780889373051

Publisher: Hogrefe Publishing, 2006

Synopsis

This new edition of one of the most popular and highly regarded texts on behavioral science and psychology has been fully updated and restructured to reflect the latest Institute of Medicine recommendations on the teaching of behavioral sciences in medicine. Its 26 chapters are divided into six core domains: mind-body interactions in health and disease, patient behavior, the physician’s role and behavior, physician-patient interactions, social and cultural issues in health care, and health policy and economics.

Danny Wedding, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Missouri-Columbia, is joined as editor by Margaret L. Stuber, MD, Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA for this edition. Under their careful guidance and editing, around 40 leading educators from major medical faculties have contributed to produce the most comprehensible and didactically well-designed text in its field.

Unique to Behavior and Medicine, for instance, is the use of hundreds of works of art, poetry, and aphorisms to provoke thought and interest and to illuminate the most important points. It’s main features are:
- Practical, clinical emphasis, based around the core topics recommended by the Institute of Medicine
- Comprehensive, trustworthy, and up-to-date
- Competitive price compared to other much less comprehensive, question-and-answer-type, course review works
- Written and carefully edited by leading educators at major medical faculties
- Numerous case examples, tables, charts, and boxes for quick access to information
- Learning and exam aids, such as sample USMLE review questions
- New chapters on: physician well-being; working with other professionals, organizations, and communities; facilitating health behavior change; communicating with patients; management of difficult patients; culturally competent healthcare; impact of social inequalities; and economics and health

About this title

About the Author:

Danny Wedding, PhD, MPH, is Director of the Missouri Institute of Mental Health, Saint Louis, MO, and Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurology, University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine, Columbia, MO. He has been teachning behavioral science to medical students for many years. Other than being a passionate teacher, he is also a lover of fine art.

The other contributors to the book are all leading educators at major medical faculties, and include:

Andy Balas, John Beaton, Debra Bendell Estroff, Larry Bradley, Howard Brody, George Brown, John Carr, Rosalind Cartwright, Salvador Ceniceros, Steve Cody, Judith Cope, Barbara Cubic, Shirley Damrosch, Denny Davidson, Nancy Diehl, James Dietch, Carol Donley, Kristofer Hagglund, Lawrence Hartledge, Wendy Heller, Bryan R. Johnson, Brick Johnstone, Jeff Kelly, Martin Kohn, Joe Labarbara, David B. Larson, Susan S. Larson, John Linton, Leon McGahee, Sharon Murphy, Barry Nurcombe, John Ruark, Mark Savickas, Darlene Shaw, David Snyder, Harriet A. Squier, John Stone, George Ulett, Marie Veitia, Edward Walker, Fred Wolf, Peter Zeldow

Review:

"...written crystal clearly, ... a very enjoyable up-to-date "read" filled with wise perceptions and precious information and recommendations." --Frederick S. Sierles, MD, Professor and Director of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science

This well organised edition of what is now a standard teaching text in North America has a structure reminiscent of Carl Jung s posthumously published Man and his Symbols (Aldus Jupiter 1964) which was aimed at the general reader. Sections such as Mind-Body Interactions in Health and Disease, Physician-Patient Interactions and Social and Cultural Issues in Health Care have their individual chapters illustrated with classical pictures (e.g. Albrecht Durer s Melencolia on page 142) and epigrams and poetry whose authors range from Epicurus to Albert Schweitzer.

UK-based readers may be pleasantly surprised by the catholicity of sources acknowledged by the US-based contributors Winnicott of Great Britain takes his place on page 134 alongside continental-based psychodynamic theorists such as Freud, Jung, Adler and Erikson (the latter of identity crisis fame) as does Professor D R Laurence late of the Pharmacology Department of University College Hospital Medical School London. But how does the book stand up as a didactic work ? Quite well in the opinion of this reviewer. Americanisms apart (and even these have teaching value for any Army doctor liable for NATO duties which means most of us) this text covers the gamut of behaviour science involved in medical practice without in any way usurping the place of an introductory textbook of psychiatry.

Overall the book represents fairly good value for its price and size. No topic is introduced at a level of complexity which would require a second reading. Nevertheless plenty of direction to the reader who wishes to explore the literature further is given in the Suggested Readings sections which conclude each of the 26 chapters. The final chapter headed American Medicine is Sick is worth reading as a very short account of how an essentially unplanned healthcare system can deliver virtually any diagnostic or therapeutic modality to those who can afford to pay, yet earlier (page 258) the American Medical Association s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs considers that the patient s failure to pay a bill is itself not sufficient justification for terminating a therapeutic relationship. A text for the DMSD library service definitely; but for the GP s or specialist s office only if the occupant is especially interested, perhaps if engaged in research with a behaviour science aspect. Edinburgh graduates will doubtless approve of the book s references to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and to the medical bildungsroman author (page 358) Colin Douglas. --Nicholas Cooper, Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps, September 2006

About this edition

• Publisher: Hogrefe Publishing
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0889373051
• ISBN 13: 9780889373051
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 4
• Number of pages: 389
• Editor: Danny Wedding, Margaret L. Stuber