Treatment Seeking and Experience with Complementary/Alternative Medicine: A Continuum of Choice

Abstract

Objectives:To examine the treatment seeking patterns of conventional medicine (CM) and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) clients across different health problems, and to investigate whether CAM clients with different levels of experience with CAM use different modes of treatment for their health issues.Design: Three-group cross-sectional, self-administered survey study. Settings and subjects: One hundred and ninety-nine (199) self-selected participants sampled from CM and CAM clinics and officesOutcome measures: Self-reported physical health problems, treatment seeking for health problems, and type of treatment used for each health problem (CM, CAM, or both) Results: Treatment rates for non-life-threatening health issues were significantly associated with client group membership after controlling for differences in the number of health problems (partial r 5 0.35, p , 0.0001), with the more experienced CAM clients reporting the highest treatment rates and the CM clients reporting the lowest rates. The newer CAM clients also differed significantly from the more experienced CAM clients in the modes of treatment used for their health issues (p , 0.0001), with the less experienced CAM clients relying more on CM alone (42.0%) or in conjunction with CAM (38.3%), whereas the experienced CAM clients used more CAM with CM (45.0%), or CAM alone (33.5%) than just CM alone (21.5%), for treating their health issues.Conclusions: CAM users may treat their health issues at higher rates than nonusers, independent of their greater number of health problems. This treatment rate increase may be associated with greater experience with CAM. CAM clients are not homogeneous in their choices of treatment modalities. Newer CAM users still rely heavily on CM treatments, whereas more experienced CAM users depend less on CM alone and more on CAM for treating their nonlife-threatening health issues.

Provider-based complementary and alternative medicine use among three chronic illness groups: Associations with psychosocial factors and concurrent use of conventional health-care services

“…Similar to other studies of general medical 7,32,35 and chronic illness populations 3 , differences in the use of conventional health-care services were found between CAM users and non-users in the present study. Whereas previous research has documented greater use of undifferentiated conventional medical services or general physicians by CAM users, this study is one of the few to find differences in the use of a broad range of conventional health-care services between CAM users and non-users with chronic illness.…”

Provider-based complementary and alternative medicine use among three chronic illness groups: Associations with psychosocial factors and concurrent use of conventional health-care services

“…Similar to other studies of general medical 7,32,35 and chronic illness populations 3 , differences in the use of conventional health-care services were found between CAM users and non-users in the present study. Whereas previous research has documented greater use of undifferentiated conventional medical services or general physicians by CAM users, this study is one of the few to find differences in the use of a broad range of conventional health-care services between CAM users and non-users with chronic illness.…”

Diagnoses and visit length in complementary and mainstream medicine

“…In earlier studies it was found that CM practitioners are visited for specific types of problems, e.g. chronic disease, anxiety, depression and poor physical fitness [ 20 - 23 ], which was confirmed in this study by CM physician's diagnoses. Moreover, differences are not only found between CM and mainstream practice, but also between types of CM practice which implies specific expertise on different domains.…”

The role of mind-body awareness in the outcomes of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)

“…Characteristics of our sample of young adult CAM users were very similar to those of CAM users found in research with general adult populations, as they were predominantly female and used CAM to supplement rather than replace conventional health care [18][19][20][21]. The majority had also used CAM for 3 or more years.…”

Provider-based complementary and alternative medicine use among three chronic illness groups: Associations with psychosocial factors and concurrent use of conventional health-care services

“…Similar to other studies of general medical 7,32,35 and chronic illness populations 3 , differences in the use of conventional health-care services were found between CAM users and non-users in the present study. Whereas previous research has documented greater use of undifferentiated conventional medical services or general physicians by CAM users, this study is one of the few to find differences in the use of a broad range of conventional health-care services between CAM users and non-users with chronic illness.…”

Diagnoses and visit length in complementary and mainstream medicine

“…In earlier studies it was found that CM practitioners are visited for specific types of problems, e.g. chronic disease, anxiety, depression and poor physical fitness [ 20 - 23 ], which was confirmed in this study by CM physician's diagnoses. Moreover, differences are not only found between CM and mainstream practice, but also between types of CM practice which implies specific expertise on different domains.…”

The role of mind-body awareness in the outcomes of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)

“…Characteristics of our sample of young adult CAM users were very similar to those of CAM users found in research with general adult populations, as they were predominantly female and used CAM to supplement rather than replace conventional health care [18][19][20][21]. The majority had also used CAM for 3 or more years.…”

Provider-based complementary and alternative medicine use among three chronic illness groups: Associations with psychosocial factors and concurrent use of conventional health-care services

“…Similar to other studies of general medical 7,32,35 and chronic illness populations 3 , differences in the use of conventional health-care services were found between CAM users and non-users in the present study. Whereas previous research has documented greater use of undifferentiated conventional medical services or general physicians by CAM users, this study is one of the few to find differences in the use of a broad range of conventional health-care services between CAM users and non-users with chronic illness.…”

Diagnoses and visit length in complementary and mainstream medicine

“…In earlier studies it was found that CM practitioners are visited for specific types of problems, e.g. chronic disease, anxiety, depression and poor physical fitness [ 20 - 23 ], which was confirmed in this study by CM physician's diagnoses. Moreover, differences are not only found between CM and mainstream practice, but also between types of CM practice which implies specific expertise on different domains.…”

The role of mind-body awareness in the outcomes of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)

“…Characteristics of our sample of young adult CAM users were very similar to those of CAM users found in research with general adult populations, as they were predominantly female and used CAM to supplement rather than replace conventional health care [18][19][20][21]. The majority had also used CAM for 3 or more years.…”