Focus on Alternative and Complementary Therapies
www.pharmpress.com/fact
Focus Alternat Complement Ther©2005 Pharmaceutical Press
Focus Altern Complement Ther 2003; 8: 124
Patients appear highly enthusiastic about alternative medicine: ‘voting with their feet’ (and chequebooks). However little contextualised or processual work has been done to understand the mindset of users (and providers) or how this mindset comes into being.
In this anthropological study, I conducted participant observation with four groups: students at an adult education homoeopathy course; mothers attending a vaccination support group run by homoeopaths; clients of low-cost homoeopathy in a Victim Support Centre; and patients of an NHS homoeopathic general practitioner (GP). Data included observations (1.5 years), taped consultations (46), and interviews (48).
Users had differing beliefs around health, illness and healing. There were two main groups: pragmatic users with a normative biomedical view of health and committed users with an alternative view of health. The GP’s beliefs were more aligned with the former category and the lay homoeopaths’ beliefs with the latter.
Where providers’ and patients’ beliefs differed (over issues such as definitions of the body, causal factors of illness, agents and time-scales of healing) communication and adherence was more problematic than when they coincided.
The active seeking-out of alternative private healthcare by motivated users was most likely to result in changes in views of health through a socialisation process.
It is often assumed that alternative medicine is welcomed by patients but it may not ‘work’ for those committed to a biomedical view of health or whose providers hold less alternative views of health than themselves.
