Biofeedback from a Top New York Psychiatrist

Biofeedback is a fairly recent addition to psychiatric therapy. It is based on the patient literally seeing how his or her body is influenced by mental processes. This is applied to specific areas and specific symptoms. Consider the patient with tension headaches. The term does not mean caused by emotional tension but literally muscle contraction and stress- muscle tension. This is generally in the forehead area as well as often at the very back of the head and neck. These muscles unconsciously will tighten up under some conditions leading to the painful headache.

Biofeedback treatment places a sensor over the forehead for example which will pick up the electrical action accompanying muscle tension. Dr. Wineburg’s patient sees a large TV screen showing the lines of greater or lesser forehead compression. Biofeedback is the awareness of those changes with the conditioning effect of reward of reducing the pressure versus the punishment of increasing it. In other words, the patient whose TV lines drop down is heartily congratulated and feels indeed that he or she has done a fine job for that moment. Should the muscle tension increase by an upward movement of the line on the screen the patient is told that it’s bad and thereby achieves a sensation of punishment. Back to Psych 101 you may recall Pavlov who trained his dogs and other animals by rewarding or punishing them to achieve a new behavior. This is exactly what happens with biofeedback. Ongoing reward of doing the right thing, in this case reducing muscle tension, will lead to the ability of the patient to literally abort headaches.

Biofeedback can be very effectively approached as well as by reducing overall emergency “fight or flight’ response by reducing the body’s stress response, conditions as hypertension are treated. The blood pressure will truly be brought down by biofeedback reducing the unwanted emergency response that leads to increasing the pressure. Many other conditions are effectively helped with biofeedback. Stroke patients can regain the use of lost movements. Those who actively grind their teeth day or night (bruxism) literally learn to relax the jaw muscles. A similar approach has been TMJ problems. Even tinnitus has been shown to be managed by biofeedback therapies.

One of the newest and most truly revolutionary approaches is neurofeedback, namely bringing specific brainwave function under control. ADDH (Attention Deficit Disorder/ Hyperactivity) can be treated without medication.

Can your physical condition be relieved or even eliminated with biofeedback? A phone call to the office may answer your problem without an in-person consultation.