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This chapter reviews alternative therapies for autism. These include diet therapy, vitamins, ketogenic diet, use of serotonin reuptake inhibitors, combinations of homeopathic growth, detoxification of mercury, auditory integration therapy, music therapy, Doman-Delacato technique, craniosacral therapy, holding therapy, horse and pony riding therapy, and dance/music therapy.

This chapter describes the political pressures that led to the creation of the Office for the Study of Unconventional Medical Practices. The exponential growth for medical costs starting in the 1970s spurred the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to find and justify the substitution of alternative therapies for orthodox medicine's more costly treatments. In 1991, Senator Thomas R. Harkin, chair of the appropriations subcommittee with oversight of the NIH, added a clause in the NIH 1992 appropriation creating a twenty-person advisory panel to recommend a research program that would “fully test the most promising unconventional medical practices.” Within a year of the committee's deliberations, the NIH created the Office for the Study of Unconventional Medical Practices, which later became known as the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM).

This chapter focuses on the changing role of service users and brings the demands and voices of patients into the equation. Research findings show that the model of ‘expert patients’ and ‘discriminating consumers’ is a limited one when applied to health care and the very diverse needs and demands of patients. Generally speaking, patients welcome their new role as informed service users, but at the same time, they sometimes feel incapable of filling this role and seek out doctors' advice in some situations. However, they take the calls for self-responsibility seriously and call for comprehensive information, especially on complementary and alternative therapies. In the German system, with its culture of equal access to health care services covered by the Statutory Health Insurance (SHI) funds, health policy's new promises on participation may turn out to challenge the state rather than the professions.

This chapter discusses problems of autonomy and competence, alternative therapy, the place of care, and the quality of care. Patients' choices are respected, even if they are not fully autonomous nor perfectly competent, in order to preserve the principle of respect for autonomy in palliative care. Refusals of treatment are overruled only if there is no doubt that the patient is incompetent to make the decision. There is a moral obligation to strive to improve quality of care. Some essential aspects of palliative care are not quantifiable in numerical terms; they must be assessed in qualitative terms, which entail value judgements. It is not morally acceptable to omit them because they cannot be evaluated numerically.

As evidenced by the chapters in this book, psychosocial hematology/oncology (hem/onc) presents a wide array of complex problems and issues for the patients, their families, and the health care team. Because the diseases are unpredictable and often life-threatening, treating the whole child effectively requires a multidisciplinary team of health care professionals working in concert to address the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of affected families. Working effectively on such a team requires specialized training to manage disease-specific issues such as pain, complexities of multidisciplinary work, and the stress resulting from working with severe and sometimes terminal illnesses. In general, there are many complex roles for psychosocial service providers in the delivery of health care (Brown et al., 2002), and for these reasons, the roles in the hem/onc setting can be even more important and complex. The purposes of this chapter are to (a) describe the phases of training, (b) discuss issues that have an impact on the training process, and (c) describe key content areas in which training is necessary to reach an acceptable level of competence for working in the area of psychosocial hem/onc. Although the team members consist of various health care professionals and subspecialties such as physicians, nurses, dieticians, psychologists, and social workers, this chapter focuses on graduate and postdoctoral training of psychosocial service providers such as psychologists, social workers, and counselors. However, many of the issues we discuss also apply to training in the other professions at both the preservice and postgraduate levels. This chapter consists of two main sections: the first section deals with the process of training, and the second addresses the content of specialized training in hem/onc. The first section begins with a detailed description of training that incorporates a developmental model of knowledge and skill acquisition. We then discuss current trends that have a direct impact on the implementation of training methods and the settings in which clinical training takes place. The second section includes a description of several content areas specific to the needs of patients and health care staff working in hem/onc. These areas address specific knowledge and skill domains and the methods by which these domains can be integrated into the training model.

How does one help a family whose child has been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness? It is a deceptively simple question with complicated answers. This brief chapter is not meant to be a history of biopsychosocial pediatric oncology, and it does not cover every theme. The explosion of studies on children with cancer over these past decades (Pizzo & Poplack, 2001) renders a retrospective look formidable and subjective. The sole purpose of this retrospective examination into the earliest beginnings is to place into context some of the main themes that have appeared over the past years, so that they can serve as a foundation for our recommendations for future intervention and research in the field. That is our assigned task. Much of the review reflects personal respective experiences beginning in the late 1960s. The chapters that form this volume, written by many of the most experienced psychosocial researchers who have brought the field so far forward over these many years, are the state of the art, tell us where we have been most recently, and tell us in greater detail where we are at the moment. Where does our psychosocial history begin? What have we done these past many years to help the children and their families cope with the illness and its treatment? With due awareness of the subjectivity and inevitable unfairness of our venture, we undertake the task with due apologies for any omissions that may occur in this retrospective review. As we begin to look in some detail at the main themes formed over the past four decades, we place our review into the context of four preambles: a multidisciplinary and international effort; an alliance between physicians and parents; research and service; and a sharing of the research wealth with economically struggling countries. From the earliest years, the effort to care for the child with cancer has been multidisciplinary, multi-institutional, and international, involving a highly cooperative and collaborative effort of physicians, nurses, psychologists, social workers, and allied health care professionals working together across national borders.

This chapter traces the history of American metaphysical religion, including the development and practice of astrology, witchcraft, the occult, alternative therapies, mind cure, New Thought, Christian Science, faith healing, and the New Age. It first considers early experiences of metaphysical religious healing among Anglo Americans before turning to some of the most prominent characters and important movements known to have practiced metaphysical and religious healing arts in the American West and Southwest. Using Catherine Albanese's term “metaphysical religions” as well as her definition of the same, it then examines the narrative assumptions of many white settlers concerning health in relation to Mexican Americans' notions of healing and sickness.