Evaluation of Clinical Biofeedback

This comprehensive survey will be useful for anyone who seriously wants to learn more about the current therapeutic status of biofeedback-therapists, physicians considering a referral, well-educated prospective patients, teachers, students, and research workers. But readers with different needs should use it in different ways. For a quick overview of a large field, one should tum to the Introduction and Summary and Conclusions sections. The reader interested in a specific disease should look for the proper section in the Table of Contents and then tum to the overall summary at the end of that section and also the briefer summaries that are given in the last paragraph of many subsections, whenever sufficient data are available. The reader who wants more information should read the entire chapter. The serious student or research worker, for whom the book will be most valuable, will want to read more of the main volume and at least to sample the Appendix to see the kinds of information that can be mined from it. When patients are satisfied with a new treatment and seem to be improved by it, why bother with any additional evaluation?
The reason is that history has shown over and over again that new forms of treatment initially can be used enthusiastically for many conditions with apparent success, only to have the pendulum swing in the opposite direction from overenthusiasm to com- plete disillusionment.