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Complementary medicine

from Medical topics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2014

By
Felicity L. Bishop  and
George T. Lewith
Edited by
Susan Ayers ,
Andrew Baum ,
Chris McManus ,
Stanton Newman ,
Kenneth Wallston ,
John Weinman  and
Robert West
Felicity L. Bishop
Affiliation:
Aldemoor Health Centre
George T. Lewith
Affiliation:
University of Southampton
Susan Ayers
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
Andrew Baum
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
Chris McManus
Affiliation:
St Mary's Hospital Medical School
Stanton Newman
Affiliation:
University College and Middlesex School of Medicine
Kenneth Wallston
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University School of Nursing
John Weinman
Affiliation:
United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy's and St Thomas's
Robert West
Affiliation:
St George's Hospital Medical School, University of London
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Summary

Introduction

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) includes a wide range of practices which do not fit in with the dominant biomedical model of health care and are not commonly provided within conventional medicine settings. In the 1960s CAM was on the fringe of the mainstream, in the 1970s it was positioned as alternative and in the 1990s it became complementary. In the new millennium, the position of CAM has changed again and is moving towards integration with conventional medicine, for example CAM therapies are commonly offered in palliative care and pain clinic contexts. Currently substantial numbers of people are turning to CAM. The prevalence of CAM use increased from 34% to 39% during the 1990s in the general population in the USA (Eisenberg et al., 1998). In the UK 46% of the population can be expected to use one or more CAM therapies in their lifetime and 10% visited a practitioner of an established CAM therapy in 1998 (Thomas et al., 2001). This chapter addresses the nature of these therapies which are proving so popular with patients, how are they regulated, whether they are seen as complementary or an alternative to conventional medicine and how conventional medicine is reacting to the rising popularity of other approaches to health care.

Popular CAM therapies

The most popular CAM therapies in the UK include acupuncture, osteopathy, chiropractic, herbal medicine and homeopathy. Descriptions of these therapies are provided in Table 1.

Type
Chapter
Information
Cambridge Handbook of Psychology, Health and Medicine , pp. 639 - 641
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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