Thanks for your well thought out comment. I have the cynicism risk factor as well as some familial ones, so other aspects of prevention are very important in my mind-set.

Organized psychology will never have the money to market psychological services…there is not even adequate money to help inform psychologists that practice as usual will not be around forever. Each individual behavioral health clinician and organization will need to re-tool to provide relevant services. Having connections with your local cardiologists is obviously a great starting point.

Back in the day when I was a clinician, I worked with a man who had severe cardiomyopathy and was waiting for a heart transplant. They would not do the surgery until he lost considerable weight. He could not exercise because of his disorder so diet and change of attitude were the only tools he had. He was highly motivated and we were successful at helping him learn weight loss techniques that allowed successful surgery. That was as satisfying an intervention as any of the purely psychological cases I had.

You are on the cutting edge. Maybe you should start doing consultation and workshops for your colleagues!

This is certainly a difficult area for most people to get their arms around partly because we have not done the same marketing of these risk factors that big pharma has about theirs. Patients I work with in cardiac rehab programs are astounded that they actually could have had a heart attack when their cholesterol is “normal”. High cholesterol is synonymous with heart disease (or vice versa)in the public mindset now. It is marketed that well. Of course it is marketed that well because there is much money to be made from these types of medications.

The few national public awareness campaigns APA has sponsored about psychotherapy in general (let alone the health effects) pale compared to the money spent on marketing the other risk factors and the quickest, easiest, new and improved (and pricey) medications to cure the other risk factors.

This is one reason to be concerned about health care reform proposals coming out now since there is already an “agreement” with big pharma to provide a significant role for them. Their ads dashed the first attempt at reform and Obama is certainly aware they can do it again. It just hampers real reform.

I guess these blogs can really turn into rants can’t they? I suppose my cyncism is showing, and yes, I am aware that cynicism is one of the components of the psychological risk factors.