Is biofeedback medical or educational?
Biofeedback equipment has been around since the 1960s, yet some people still don’t know about it.
Being able to use technology to help learn control over physiology has almost endless applications.
Many people have been working hard for a long time to make biofeedback more accepted by the medical system. There are physical medical applications like tension and migraine headaches, neck pain, back pain, other types of chronic pain, muscle spasm, hypertension, and asthma. There are also mental health applications like ADHD, anxiety, PTSD, and depression.
The Biofeedback Certification International Alliance (BCIA) provides certification for those meeting their established requirements including education, experience, mentoring, and a written exam to evidence their qualifications to provide biofeedback professionally. The Association for Applied Psychophysiology & Biofeedback is a professional association for people who provide biofeedback. They offer education, hold an annual conference, and publish a magazine and scientific journal as well as books on the subject. All of this has helped biofeedback to become accepted by the physical and medical fields to a degree. Many of us in the field of biofeedback are still disappointed in the reluctance of some insurance companies to reimburse health care professionals for providing biofeedback to their clients. This sometimes discourages people from providing biofeedback in their practices purely financial reasons. I have actually had doctors tell me that they believe biofeedback is really good for their patients but they aren’t doing it because one of the main insurance carriers their patients have doesn’t reimburse for it. This is a shame. If a therapy is effective, healthcare providers should be able to be paid for providing it. This fight continues.
Another way to look at how biofeedback equipment is used is as education which can happen outside of the medical world. We use technology to learn all of the time. We use technology to help other people learn. What if you are using technology to help someone learn about their physiology? That is what we are doing with biofeedback. This can open up a whole other world outside of the medical field. If you are not treating a clinical, diagnosable, physical or mental health condition then you can use biofeedback to teach someone an increased level of control over things like their breathing, muscle tension, heart rate, skin temperature, or even brain wave activity. It is still powerful but it doesn’t have to be medical. It can actually be fun and rewarding to learn this kind of control. It doesn’t only have to be used for someone who has something “wrong with them”. People do pay for education. Even if health care insurance doesn’t pay for biofeedback there are still ways to get paid for providing it. Coaching or teaching using biofeedback equipment as an educational tool and charging a fee for it is a business model that can work well. It is also a way that people can access biofeedback learning without having to do it through the medical world.
So, the answer is that biofeedback is both medical and education. It all depends on how it is being used. In reality, it is an educational tool that can be used as a medical intervention.
Harry L. Campbell
914-762-4646 – Harry@biofeedbackinternational.com
Author of What Stress Can Do, Available on Amazon.com, Youtube.com
Biofeedback Resources International Corp.
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