The Department of General Internal Medicine and Psychosomatics is scientifically active in many areas - from basic research to clinical research and health care research.
The research area Clinical Studies and Psychotherapy Research is concerned with assessing the effectiveness of new therapies and/or looking in detail at what works in psychosomatic therapies.

Health services research deals with psychosomatic issues under everyday conditions. It serves to identify gaps in care and necessary adjustments to existing structures.

The research focus Psychosomatics in medical conditions takes up the special situation of Heidelberg psychosomatics with its embedment in the medical hospital and deals with the challenges of psychosocial medicine for physically ill patients.

A better understanding of the interplay of physical and mental diseases is the goal of Experimental Psychosomatics and Neuroscience.

The department is also committed to the next generation and continuous further education and therefore uses scientific methods of Teaching and training research to investigate how competencies and specific skills can be ideally taught.