Biofeedback: Using the power of the mind–body connection, technology, and business in psychotherapies of the future.

Abstract

This article examines biofeedback within the context of American health care, mind-body practice, clinical psychology, technology, and business. American medicine is shifting its emphasis from disease management to health promotion, prevention, and integrative symptom management. This biopsychosocial approach requires the use of clinically and cost-effective behavioral health interventions. Biofeedback is an ideal tool because it harnesses the mind-body connection to help patients improve disease conditions and even achieve optimal health. With its capability to teach self-regulation, to treat a variety of chronic disease conditions, to blend the technical and the humanistic, coupled with its budding research profile, biofeedback can offer clinically and cost-effective, interventions that fit nicely into the primary care delivery system. The push of the American Psychological Association for psychologists to practice in primary care settings along with the extensive training in lifestyle interventions that clinical health psychologists undergo makes them uniquely qualified to integrate biofeedback into clinical health practice. If psychologists routinely included biofeedback in their psychotherapy practices and honed their entrepreneurial skills to market it, they could create a mind-body intervention that increases the demand for behavioral care. Thus, biofeedback offers an opportunity to invigorate American psychotherapy, as the American health care system will benefit from effective holistic mind-body practices. Public Significance StatementThis article addresses how biofeedback, if routinely incorporated into current psychotherapy practice, could enhance health care by providing clinically and cost-effective behavioral interventions. Biofeedback can help people to make lifestyle changes by teaching them to self-regulate their physiological processes, to handle life stressors more effectively, to cope with and improve chronic medical conditions, and to enhance overall performance. Psychologists are particularly well suited to assume a leadership role in promoting the use of this beneficial intervention which can promote holistic care within the American health care system.

Dance/movement therapy as a holistic approach to diminish health discrepancies and promote wellness for people with schizophrenia: a review of the literature

“…Biofeedback is an underutilized therapeutic tool that affirms mind-body connectivity while giving recipients and clinicians in-the-moment health related information. This further substantiates the notion that physical health can directly affect mental and emotional aspects and vice versa (Austad & Gendron, 2018). Although there is some consideration for the mind-body connection and how it affects wellness, many forms of traditional psychotherapy do not enter into the therapeutic process with the body at the forefront (Austad & Gendron, 2018;Fiskum, 2019).…”

“…Similarly to DMT, biofeedback is an option for further mind-body integration that provides participants with an active role in their wellness (Austad & Gendron, 2018). Both treatment interventions provide participants with immediate data regarding the effects the body can have on the mind and vice versa.…”

“…These are components that not only support increased personal and interpersonal wellness, but also provide self-efficacy to encourage physical and mental health care adherence, and embodied treatment experiences placing mind-body wellness at the forefront of care (Biondo et al, 2021). The addition of biofeedback to DMT could provide further physiological (Austad & Gendron, 2018;Fiskum, 2019) and neurological data (King & Parada, 2020). A treatment protocol inclusive of DMT can provide a foundation for the rehumanization process that people with schizophrenia certainly deserve.…”

“…This can elevate awareness of the mind-body connection while providing adaptive tools for self-regulation. Provision of such regulation tools can further self-awareness and improve physical and mental health (Austad & Gendron, 2018). Measurements of high Heart Rate Variability (HRV), and signals of lower cardiac complexity, can provide data suggestive of an increased capacity for emotion regulation and overall psychological wellbeing (Fiskum, 2019).…”

Dance/movement therapy as a holistic approach to diminish health discrepancies and promote wellness for people with schizophrenia: a review of the literature

“…This is largely due to the structural racism that occurs within mental health facilities. Systemically racist underpinnings of mental health care facilities cause undue stress for People of Color (POC), particularly Black and African American men (Alang, 2019;Asonye et al, 2020;Harnett & Ressler, 2021;Metzl & Roberts, 2014;Misra et al, 2022). Over-and misdiagnosis of African Americans, particularly as it pertains to schizophrenia, have been consistent even with the adjustments made to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) from its inception in 1952 and continuing through each iteration.…”