Behavior and Medicine » (4th Edition)

Wedding, Danny, PhD, MPH

The book contains black-and-white illustrations.

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.