Essay:In defense of alternative medicine

Provocative title aside, this isn't intended to be a "true" defense of alternative medicine. Rather, I'm attempting to make a few observations that sympathize with the individuals who choose to seek out alternative treatments and perhaps shed some light on the "why" behind turning to alternative medicine.

Background

This essay is going to sound like anecdotal evidence, and I apologize. The content is derived from an unpublished participant-observer study done by my spouse as an anthropology student at a number of alternative medicine outlets in the Chicago suburbs, so any conclusions I present here should be taken in that context - as the data was internally consistent but it was geographically limited and isn't really the best background for drawing concrete conclusions. That's why this is in essayspace.

What makes alternative medicine attractive?

Practitioners of alternative medicine are pretty much universally in private practice. That means they have no hospital shifts to deal with, and thus more time to deal with patients (theoretically). Since alternative medicine is pretty much unregulated in the United States, practitioners generally don't have to deal with licensing boards or other oversight which take time and energy from reg'lar doctors. This ties in with the next two points, allowing alternative practitioners to create closer bonds with their patients customers than licensed medical professionals.

A surprisingly high number of alties came to alternative medicine as a last resort, feeling that mainstream medical care was failing to deal with their problems. These complaints end up getting divided into two categories:

1. Doctors diagnosed their patients too quickly, and when those diagnoses were falsified showed no interest in further treatment, leaving the still suffering patient feeling abandoned.
2. Doctors admitted too freely that they had no idea what was wrong with the patient, making the patient feel like the doctor was incompetent.

The contradictory element of the above statements should be readily apparent, but the methods that practitioners of alternative medicine use deal fairly handily with both complaints. These individuals are attracted to alternative medicine because practitioners (possibly because they have more time on their hands) are comfortable providing esoteric diagnoses immediately, making the patient feel like their complaint is being taken seriously and that the practitioner has at least some understanding of what is wrong and will thus be able to assist. Alternative medicine practitioners also tend to be completely comfortable changing diagnoses at the drop of the hat, which helps to avoid the first complaint about mainstream medicine above.