Steve Heymen, PhD, BCIAC

Biography

Dr. Heymen is the Director of Biofeedback Services at the Center for Functional GI and Motility Disorders. He is a Senior Fellow with the Biofeedback Certification Institute of America and has provided biofeedback therapy for more than thirty years for patients with pelvic floor disorders and for patients with chronic pain conditions. He received his PhD in Biological Psychology from the UNC Department of Psychology, with a minor in Statistics. In addition, he has an MS in Clinical Psychology from Barry University in Miami, Florida. He is licensed as a Psychological Associate in North Carolina and as a Mental Health Counselor in Florida.

Dr. Heymen was the Director of Biofeedback Services at The Cleveland Clinic in Ft. Lauderdale Florida for ten years There, he provided psychotherapy and biofeedback for patients in the departments of Psychiatry and Colorectal Surgery. While at CCF, Dr. Heymen began research in the area of biofeedback for pelvic floor disorders and was recruited to UNC by Dr. Bill Whitehead in 1999 to develop the treatment protocol and serve as the project manager of his NIH-funded study investigating the efficacy of biofeedback therapy for patients with fecal incontinence and a parallel study investigating the efficacy of biofeedback for treating patients with constipation due to pelvic floor muscle mis-coordination.
Both studies have been successfully completed (see publication list), and have prompted a follow-up investigation to assess the education/behavioral treatment portion of the protocol for patients with fecal incontinence, who are home bound and are not able to access biofeedback therapy available here at UNC hospital. We have pilot tested the education/behavioral treatment protocol for fecal incontinence at three local community based continuing care retirement centers (CCRC) and have included that pilot data as part of a 4-year grant application to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) currently in review. Dr. Heymen also served as PI investigating the role that fecal incontinence plays in the decision to refer patients to nursing homes, which has provided pilot data for another AHRQ grant application that is also currently in review.

Following the completion of the biofeedback studies in 2007, Dr. Heymen developed a new Biofeedback Clinic in the Division of Gastroenterology at UNC Hospital. He currently supervises one full-time Biofeedback Therapist (Dr. Mary Scholz), who provides biofeedback for patients with fecal incontinence, constipation or rectal pain.

The Pelvic Floor Disorders Network (PFDN) recently requested Dr. Heymen’s treatment protocol manual from our Biofeedback study to use in a multi site treatment effectiveness trial comparing Biofeedback to loperimide for treating women with fecal incontinence. The PFDN has conducted a number of multi-site investigations for the treatment of pelvic floor disorders and is funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Dr. Heymen was also invited to participate as member of the protocol committee for the biofeedback trial and to train the biofeedback therapists at the seven tertiary care treatment centers that make up the PFDN (University of Alabama at Birmingham, Loyola University, Duke University, University of California at San Diego, Cleveland Clinic, University of Utah, and the University of Texas Southwestern).

Research Interests

Biofeedback, fecal incontinence, constipation, central pain dysregulation, rectal pain.

Other Research Interests

To further Dr. Heymen’s longstanding interest in chronic pain, in 2007 he conducted a psychophysical investigation (see publication list) which found significant deficits in an endogenous pain inhibitory mechanism called Diffuse Noxious Inhibitory Controls (DNIC) in patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). These findings mirror the results of investigations of other chronic pain conditions like fibromyalgia, and suggest a common etiology of dysregulation of endogenous analgesic mechanisms for these chronic pain conditions. Data from this pilot study was included in another NIH grant application to further test abnormalities in efferent (DNIC) and to examine an afferent central pain mechanism called temporal summation in patients with IBS, that is also currently in review.
In addition to exploring the biological influences on functional GI disorders, such as DNIC and temporal summation, Dr. Heymen has a special interest in the psychological contributions to functional GI disorder symptoms focusing on anxiety, anger, somatization, and hypervigilance. Ultimately, Dr. Heymen plans to apply advanced statistical models, such as structural equation modeling, hierarchical linear modeling, and growth models to maximize the acquisition of information from these investigations.

Link to a list of publications on PubMed.