The Integrative Health Movement

CAM is gaining attention and acceptance, partly because of professional and public concerns about the adverse side-effects, limited benefits, and long-term complications caused by some conventional medical treatments. CAM has become a multi-billion a year business, despite uncertainty about the safety and liability issues of these products and services. Although much scientific research remains to be done, the following types of CAM treatments already have sufficient scientific validation to warrant professional and public acceptance: massage, acupuncture, nutritional supplements, herbal medicines, homeopathy, naturopathy, nutrition, physical exercise, meditation, yoga, prayer, and Ayurveda.(1) Other CAM treatments are popular, despite insufficient scientific validation at the present time.

CAM has been proven safe and effective for the treatment of many types of mental health disorders, including depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, obesity, addictions and other mental health disorders, as well as a variety of medical disorders. For example, St. John’s Wart has proven to be as effective for the treatment of mild and acute depression as anti-depressants and it also prevents depressive relapse (2).

CAM treatments can sometimes be used to either enhance or replace conventional medical, psychological and psychiatric treatments, but this should be done under the supervision of a trained health professional. Many people are using CAM treatments on their own at the same time as undergoing medical treatment and without informing their family physician. Dangerous interaction effects between physician-prescribed treatments and self-prescribed CAM treatments are possible, when patients don’t inform their physicians of what they are doing. So, CAM treatments need to be integrated with other medical or mental health treatments by professionals who have studied how to do so. The occasional toxicity of natural products and services demonstrates the need for greater federal regulation in this field to ensure public safety and promote appropriate use of CAM products.

A second promising trend is Positive Psychology. The illness-oriented focus of mainstream medical and mental health fields has not helped us to understand how to promote optimal mind-body health. As many others have said before, the absence of illness in not a good definition of optimal health. Martin Seligman, founder of the Positive Psychology movement predicts that the 21^st century will see the emergence of “a psychology of positive human functioning”.(3)

Positive psychology shifts the focus from illness, pathology and problems towards focusing on how to promote optimal health. We haven’t studied positive emotions like compassion and hope the way we’ve studied negative emotions, such as depression and anxiety. Positive psychology has identified a set of core virtues (justice, courage, etc.) and strengths (fairness, modesty, integrity, etc.) that are recognized across many different cultures as representing human functioning at its best. Positive psychology is based on scientific research showing that these kinds of positive human qualities can be learned and repaired. It also studies how strengths and values promote health; and how to teach optimistic explanatory styles, empathy, compassion, forgiveness, gratitude, humor, spirituality, creativity, and “flow”.

A Third promising trend that recognizes the interaction of mind and body is mindfulness-based meditation for the treatment of both medical and mental health problems. Mindfulness is a present-oriented state of consciousness involving alert, non-judgmental, accepting awareness of one’s self, including patterns of thought, feelings, actions, and motivations, as well as awareness of one’s surroundings. Researchers in this field, like John Kabat-Zinn have proven that mindfulness meditation can effectively boost immune system functioning, thereby assisting with a wide variety of psychosomatic disorders that are affected by stress, such as: chronic pain, fibromyalgia, gastrointestinal problems and many other medical disorders. It has also proven to significantly shorten the time required to heal from surgery. Mindfulness is also effective for treating a variety of mental health disorders, such as depressive relapse in individuals who have experienced three or more episodes of depression. It is also helpful with several types of anxiety disorders.(4)

Mindfulness meditation is new to western medicine and psychology, but it has existed for thousands of years in India, China and the rest of East Asia. Mindfulness meditation is a part of many religious traditions, yet it is essentially non-religious and not problem-focused. Instead, it seeks to improve the abilities to focus attention, calm down, empathize with others and disengage from ego-driven patterns of thought, feeling and behavior. It promotes states of being associated with peacefulness, compassion, and kindness. It encourage acceptance and “letting-go” at the same time as it encourages compassionate engagement. The Dalai Lama of Tibet has played an important role in stimulating western researchers to study the benefits of meditation by sponsoring annual dialogues at the Mind and Life Institute.

We live in an age of specialization. We see a variety of professionals for our health care needs, because it is impossible for one professional to be an expert in everything. Yet, if one is seeing several different professionals at the same time, the integration and coordination of their work is left to the often over-worked family physician. Public interest in holistic approaches to health has grown, because we know the body interacts with the mind and no one approach, including conventional medicine, can meet all our needs.

Increasing professional interest in integrative treatments is based on the recognition that blending different types of treatment (biological, lifestyle, spiritual, energy, mind-body, etc.) may be more effective for healing the whole self. The integration of psychological, medical and CAM services offers the best chance we have for creating healing environments that unleash the natural healing powers within each of us.

The explosion of public interest in holistic health is encouraging both researchers and practitioners to seriously pay attention to subtle sources of influence on human behavior, such as “chi” (life force energy); to study desirable emotional states that have been previously ignored, such as compassion; and begin asking themselves how to measure and compare the effects of integrating various combinations of CAM treatments versus the effects of any one treatment alone.

If positive psychology, mindfulness meditation, and other CAM services can be successfully integrated with conventional medical and psychological approaches, we may be able to achieve better health outcomes. The need to coordinate and blend the work of various types of health professionals may eventually lead to inter-disciplinary teams working together on common treatment goals. In the meantime, consumers of health services will increasingly expect their medical professionals to be aware and open to collaborating with psychologists and CAM practitioners. In future articles I will discuss these types of healing strategies and trends in more detail.

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