Introduction

This book is intended to foster thinking and dialogue about behavioral health clinicians providing psychological treatments as part of medical practice. Since medical sites evaluate and treat more mental health and substance abuse problems than the specialty behavioral health system and because many acute and chronic medical presentations have significant psychological components, on-site collaboration between medicine and behavioral health is a logical, feasible, and important evolution of medical care. The majority of this book is the presentation of medical cases in which psychological dimensions are important components of the problem, or cases that are primarily mental health diagnoses that were treated in primary care or specialty medical settings. The feature common to each of the cases is that they represent some form of collaborative treatment between medicine and behavioral health. Conversations about the issues raised in this volume will hopefully be held by those who participate in providing health care, who do not often think and talk about these issues together. The intended audience is physicians, psychologists, behavioral health providers, health care administrators, health care financers, and health care policy makers. Each has both a role and an impact on patient care and patient outcomes although each has a different perspective on achieving the goal. Because of new clinical advancements and administrative and cost pressures, the goals of medicine have shifted to achieving the right care for patients.