Abstract
Biofeedback therapy (BF) has been used for more than thirty years in psychosomatic medicine. Although commercial healthcare products that are related to BF are accepted among health-conscious people, there are not many clinicians and researchers who are interested in BF and our association, the Japanese Society of Biofeedback Research (JSBR). In order to revitalize BF and JSBR, we considered it to be important to investigate and clarify what the clinicians and researchers who have not yet joined the JSBR think of BF. From this standpoint, members of the JSBR who were interested in this study gathered to conduct a questionnaire survey of how BF has been recognized and used in university hospitals. We made two questionnaires. In one questionnaire, we asked each department questions about their experience of using BF and how they recognized BF. In the other questionnaire, we requested the members of each department who were interested in BF to answer similar questions from their personal standpoint. We considered that departments specializing in neurology, psychiatry, psychosomatic internal medicine, rehabilitation, and general medicine could have used BF. We mailed the questionnaires to those departments in the middle of November, 2001. Although we sent the questionnaires to 355 departments, three did not have any clinical function. Out of 352 departments that had clinical functions, 164 departments (47%) answered one or both of the questionnaires. Out of 154 departments that replied, 65 (42%) answered that they knew BF well, and 69 (45%) answered that they had used BF. However, only fifty-two (34%) replied that they would use BF in the future. We considered that potential interest in BF was unexpectedly high. We need to take appropriate action to connect this interest with practical activities.
