Stress and Biofeedback

Abstract

People living in current complicated societies are influenced by various psychosocial stressors. Biological responses to stressor are adaptive and defensive mechanism in nature. Psychological, physiological and behavioral problems may be evoked, if stressors are excess and continue for a long time, or if coping strategies are not effective so much. Anxiety disorders and mood disorders may be considered as psychological responses to stressors in many cases. Psychosomatic disease, which is defined as somatic disease influenced by psychosocial factors strongly, may be considered as physiological responses to stressor. Even if there are many psychosomatic therapies for psychosomatic disease, biofeedback therapy was expected as the most effective one. But, biofeedback therapy is not yet applied in general clinical practice. Its reasons might be as follows: (1) Evidences of biofeedback therapy are not so much, (2) Much treatment time is needed, (3) Mechanism of efficacy is not clarified. In order to overcome these issues, it is needed that improvement of usability of biofeedback equipment, accumulation of clinical evidence, and approach to information processing in the brain. And, the interdisciplinary collaboration with near research fields is important, in which key words may be measuring of biological information, feedback, and control.