Behavior and Medicine » (3rd Edition)

Wedding, Danny, PhD, MPH

A unique textbook, comprehensive and up-to-date, with a practical, clinical emphasis and a structure that is ideally suited for teaching behavioral sciences in the medical school classroom.

This new edition of one of the most popular and highly regarded texts on behavioral and social science in medicine has been fully revised and updated. It is structured to reflect the latest Institute of Medicine recommendations on the teaching of behavioral and social sciences in medicine. Its 25 chapters are divided into five core domains.

Under the careful guidance and editing of Danny Wedding, PhD, Professor of Psychology at Alliant International University in San Francisco, CA, and Margaret L. Stuber, MD, the Jane and Marc Nathanson Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA, over 40 leading educators from major medical faculties have contributed to produce the most comprehensible and well-designed text in its field. Unique to Behavior and Medicine is the use of hundreds of works of art, poetry, and aphorisms to provoke thought and interest and to illuminate the most important points.

Warren Lee Holleman

This is an attractive, interesting book on psychosocial aspects of health, featuring chapters on the various stages of the life cycle; health issues related to love, sexuality, and work; assessing the mental health of patients; and unhealthy behaviors associated with preventable illnesses. Authors from throughout the United States contributed to the volume. The purpose is to describe how behavior affects health and to encourage the reader to practice a more humane, effective style of medicine. This is an extremely important task, considering the way medical education gives insufficient attention to the psychosocial component of health and the therapeutic value of empathy. The book meets this objective. Targeted especially to medical students, the book will be useful to students in other health professions as well, including nursing, public health, psychology, and physician assistants. The most striking feature is the extraordinary number of paintings, photographs, poems, and literary excerpts used effectively to illustrate the themes of the chapters. This second edition has significantly fewer references than the earlier one, appropriate given its purpose of introducing the subject to a broad range of students. The book is an excellent introduction to the psychosocial dimension of health, illness, and medicine. The chapters are written in a compact, clinically relevant, and interesting style that will engage all students, including those seeking a different perspective than the standard one taught in basic sciences and those who generally have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the trough of behavioral medicine.