Health, the Individual, and Integrated Medicine: Revisiting an Aesthetic of Health Care

by Aldridge, David

• ISBN13: 9781843102328
• ISBN10: 1843102323
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-03-01
• Publisher: JESSICA KINGSLEY

Summary

How do we decide on the most effective way to heal ourselves or our patients? Complementary therapies are a vital part of any integrated approach to health which incorporates specialist and layperson knowledge. In this book, David Aldridge examines cultural understandings of illness and medicines. He provides a critique of orthodox methods used to assess treatment, and advocates a more pluralistic approach to medical research and practice, encompassing the physical, psychological, spiritual and social dimensions of a person's life. To assess medical research in a range of situations, Aldridge examines how asthma can be treated by acupuncture, how communities cope with terminal cancer and how music therapy and spiritual healing can be used. In a positive move to improve current healthcare systems, Aldridge suggests guidelines for medical education and research. Doctors and other healthcare professionals, academics, students and people undergoing treatment themselves wil

Table of Contents

PREFACE	7	(12)
Chapter 1 Making and Taking Health Care Decisions	19	(14)
Chapter 2 Lifestyle, Charismatic Ideology and a Praxis Aesthetic	33	(16)
Chapter 3 The Clinical Assessment of Acupuncture for Asthma	49	(5)
Chapter 4 Of Ethics and Education: Strategies for Curriculum Development	54	(7)
Chapter 5 Aesthetics and the Individual in the Practice of Medical Research	61	(12)
Chapter 6 Clinical Research, the Individual Patient, and the Limits of Randomized Controlled Trials	73	(11)
Chapter 7 A Community Approach to Cancer in Families	84	(12)
Chapter 8 Music Therapy References Relating to Cancer and Palliative Care	96	(11)
Chapter 9 Music Therapy and Spirituality: A Transcendental Understanding of Suffering	107	(13)
Chapter 10 Prayer and Spiritual Healing in Medical Settings	120	(10)
Chapter 11 A Qualitative Research Perspective on Healing	130	(19)
Chapter 12 The Breath in Healing	149	(14)
Chapter 13 Music Therapy and Neurological Rehabilitation: Recognition and the Performed Body in an Ecological Niche	163	(17)
Chapter 14 Guidelines for Clinical Research	180	(17)
REFERENCES	197	(19)
SUBJECT INDEX	216	(4)
AUTHOR INDEX	220