The Handbook emphasizes the concepts and technologies of clinical psychophysiology in providing an evidence-based empirical approach to problems of patients in primary care medicine from a biopsychosocial perspective. This Handbook introduces conceptual models from the psychophysiological perspective for understanding functional medical problems and describes specific clinical tools and interventions.
It provides overviews of the best documented cognitive-behavioural approaches and alternative therapies to common disorders of primary care; and gives recommendations as to necessary education for practitioners in each of the mind-body disciplines (physicians, behavioural psychologists, nurse practitioners, etc.).
The four editors are proponents of biofeedback, clinical psychophysiology, and related behavioural approaches. These approaches emphasise the acquisition of skills increasing a patient's ability to self-regulate physically, emotionally, and behaviourally. The Handbook covers such therapies as biofeedback, voluntary control skills training, health education, and behavioural and cognitive therapies. In line with a humanistic orientation, the book concludes with a look at the existential and spiritual side of the human encounter with sickness and disease.