A third of American adults are using complementary or alternative medicine to improve their health – treating conditions ranging from back pain and migraines to insomnia.
As the demand for complimentary medicine increases, the demand for well-trained practitioners … and high quality research on effective treatments … will grow too. In fact, they will become necessities.
That’s why Saybrook Graduate School, a leader for decades in the complementary health care movement, is taking the lead again by creating a landmark graduate degree in Mind-Body Medicine.
“Mind-body medicine is a revolutionary twenty-first century approach to health care that includes a wide range of behavioral and lifestyle interventions, on an equal basis with traditional medical interventions,” says Saybrook’s Mind-Body Medicine program director Donald Moss. “The patient in mind-body medicine is understood as a totality of body, mind, and spirit. Interventions are directed at each of these aspects of the person. The medical conditions linked with human suffering today, in the affluent societies of the developed world, are caused as much by lifestyle, dietary habits, activity level, and life-stress, as they are by such traditional causes of disease as infection, virus, bacteria, and physical trauma.”
Saybrook’s degrees in Mind-Body Medicine will cover the interactions between the brain, mind, body, and behavior – and the ways they can impact health. Students in the PhD program can choose to pursue a practice track, a research track, or a track in health systems administration.
The entire program will be grounded in the idea that medicine should respect and enhance each person’s capacity for self-knowledge and self-care, and emphasize techniques that engage the patient in the process of their own healing.
That approach is at the core of the humanistic tradition of thought that Saybrook was founded to support – and has become the international home of since its inception in 1971.
“Humanistic thought emphasizes that human beings are more than their component parts,” says Moss. “For five decades humanistic psychologists have called for a new medicine and a new health care, addressing the whole human being – body, mind and spirit. Saybrook’s new degree programs in mind-body medicine will promote that dream, and prepare health professionals to make it an actuality ”
Saybrook’s programs in Mind-Body Medicine include masters, doctoral, and certificate options; the first students will enroll beginning in Fall 2009. The programs have been designed for professionals in a variety of career fields who wish to enhance and expand their skills, pursue research in health and wellness, or administer community-oriented health programs.
The new Mind-Body Medicine programs will also serve as the nucleus for Saybrook’s College of Integrative and Alternative Health Studies, and are an important building block for the multidisciplinary university contemplated in Saybrook’s strategic plan and vision for its future.
The Mind-Body Medicine programs will be directed by Saybrook faculty Donald Moss, PhD who has been working with other Saybrook faculty to develop the curriculum. The programs have several unique features that include:
- Coursework options designed to serve multiple professional interests
- Biofeedback and hypnosis training leading to national certification
- A year-round schedule for faster completion
- Online teaching, experiential, video-conferencing, and onsite training.
For more information, please contact [email protected].