The Dialectical Tension Between Individuation and Depersonalization in Cancer Patients' Mediation of Complementary, Alternative and Biomedical Cancer Treatments

Broom, Alex; Tovey, Philip

doi:10.1177/0038038507082313

Cited by 46 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…They are not a priori explanations, but indicators of what to look for when one attends to the field of CAM use. They also need to be located, Broom and Tovey (2007) argued, within the demographic and physiological confines of each person's illness.…”

Section: Embodied Usersmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Problem of Complementary and Alternative Medicine Use Today

MacArtney

Wahlberg

2014

Qual Health Res

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Commentators such as Goldacre, Dawkins, and Singh and Ernst are worried that the rise in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) represents a flight from science propagated by enemies of reason. We outline what kind of problem CAM use is for these commentators, and find that users of CAM have been constituted as duped, ignorant, irrational, or immoral in explaining CAM use. However, this form of problematization can be described as a flight from social science. We explore CAM use in light of a rigorous and robust social scientific body of knowledge about how individuals engage with CAM. By pointing to the push and pull factors, CAM user's experiences of their body, and the problem of patient choice in CAM use, we summarize some of the key findings made by social scientists and show how they trouble many of the reasoned assumptions about CAM use.

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Section: Embodied Usersmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Problem of Complementary and Alternative Medicine Use Today

MacArtney

Wahlberg

2014

Qual Health Res

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“…Such tension can be an important factor in shaping cancer patients' first impressions and influencing their confidence in CAM practices. [71][72][73] Although openness to experience may predicate the use of provider-directed CAM, clinical distress has predicated the use of selfdirected CAM. 74 This perception of openness is likely related to a need for better integration of CAM and conventional medicine in medical settings.…”

Section: Anxietymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…71,80 These issues of expectancy are at least partially independent of known direct biological effects of interventions and require improving clinical trial design and interpretation of nonspecific healing responses that constitute the placebo effect.…”

Section: Anxietymentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Creative Arts Therapies on Psychological Symptoms and Quality of Life in Patients With Cancer

Puetz¹,

Morley²,

Herring³

2013

JAMA Intern Med

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Importance: Creative arts therapies (CATs) can reduce anxiety, depression, pain, and fatigue and increase quality of life (QOL) in patients with cancer. However, no systematic review of randomized clinical trials (RCTs) examining the effects of CAT on psychological symptoms among cancer patients has been conducted.Objectives: To estimate the effect of CAT on psychological symptoms and QOL in cancer patients during treatment and follow-up and to determine whether the effect varied according to patient, intervention, and design characteristics.Evidence Review: We searched ERIC, Google Scholar, MEDLINE, PsycInfo, PubMed, and Web of Science from database inception to January 2012. Studies included RCTs in which cancer patients were randomized to a CAT or control condition and anxiety, depression, pain, fatigue and/or QOL were measured pre-and post-intervention. Twenty-seven studies involving 1576 patients were included. We extracted data on effect sizes, moderators, and study quality. Hedges d effect sizes were computed, and random-effects models were used to estimate sampling error and population variance. Findings: During treatment, CAT significantly reduced anxiety (⌬ = 0.28 [95% CI, 0.11-0.44]), depression (⌬ = 0.23 [0.05-0.40]), and pain (⌬ = 0.54 [0.33-0.75]) and increased QOL (⌬ = 0.50 [0.25-0.74]). Pain was significantly reduced during follow-up (⌬ = 0.59 [95% CI, 0.42-0.77]). Anxiety reductions were strongest for studies in which ( 1) a non-CAT therapist administered the intervention compared with studies that used a creative arts therapist and (2) a waiting-list or usual-care comparison was used. Pain reductions were largest during inpatient treatment and for homogeneous cancer groups in outpatient settings; significantly smaller reductions occurred in heterogeneous groups in outpatient settings.Conclusions and Relevance: Exposure to CAT can improve anxiety, depression, and pain symptoms and QOL among cancer patients, but this effect is reduced during follow-up.

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“…At times, such forms of resistance have been viewed as gendered; that is, scholars have connected the patriarchal tendencies of biomedicine in the 20th Century with increased use of CAM (Bix, 2004;Feldberg, 2004;Nissen, 2011; see also Taylor, 1999). In turn, CAM has been presented as a social movement that articulates -more so than biomedicine -the value of subjectivity and authenticity in ideas about the self, the body and disease (Baarts and Pedersen, 2009;Bishop and Yardley, 2004;Broom and Tovey, 2007;Feldberg, 2004;Luff and Thomas, 2000;Sointu, 2006aSointu, , 2006bSointu, , 2011Sointu and Woodhead, 2008). The elevation of subjectivity and well-being as evident in CAM practice as a counter discourse to biomedicalized notions of physical pathology has been one contribution of this theoretical trajectory (Broom and Tovey, 2007;Scambler and Kelleher, 2006).…”

Section: Passages Of Resistance: Medicalization Patriarchy and The Hmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bodies of knowledge: Nature, holism and women’s plural health practices

2012

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The proliferation of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), and women's high level of engagement with these practices, has presented sociology with a range of questions regarding gender, embodiment and identity work in the context of contemporary medical pluralism. The current study, drawing on 60 qualitative interviews with women from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health (ALSWH), examines how a group of Australian women negotiate CAM and biomedicine in a range of health and illness contexts. Selected from the mid-aged cohort of this national study, here we explore their accounts of engagement with CAM and biomedicine, unpacking their logics underpinning, and rhetorical practices surrounding, their therapeutic engagement. The results provide significant insight into: the importance of ideas about nature, holism and strengthening; perceptions of the harshness and softness of medicines for women's bodies; and, the relative importance of scientific proof vis-a-vis individual subjectivities. Ultimately, their accounts illustrate gendered and embodied strategies of strategic integration, and importantly, border crossing. We conclude that while women's engagement with CAM and biomedicine may be indeed be gendered in character, we suggest a rethinking of gender-based resistance (to biomedicine) or gender-alignment (to CAM) arguments; the notion of women as designers would more adequately capture the landscapes of contemporary medical pluralism.

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The Dialectical Tension Between Individuation and Depersonalization in Cancer Patients' Mediation of Complementary, Alternative and Biomedical Cancer Treatments

Cited by 46 publications

References 24 publications

The Problem of Complementary and Alternative Medicine Use Today

The Problem of Complementary and Alternative Medicine Use Today

Effects of Creative Arts Therapies on Psychological Symptoms and Quality of Life in Patients With Cancer

Bodies of knowledge: Nature, holism and women’s plural health practices

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