Academic literature on the topic 'Alternative medicine Victoria'

This article examines the drive for legitimation on the part of Chinese medicine and more specifically acupuncture in Australia. It examines the development of Chinese medicine in Australia, the road to statutory registration of Chinese medicine in Victoria, and the niche of Chinese medicine within the context of the Australian plural medical system. Despite the opposition of organized medicine, the Victorian Parliament passed the Chinese Medicine Registration Act in May 2000, making Victoria the only Australian political jurisdiction to formally regulate Chinese medicine practitioners and acupuncturists. The legal status of Chinese medicine and acupuncture outside of Victoria resembles that of naturopathy and other natural therapies, such as Western herbalism and homeopathy, none of which has achieved statutory registration in any Australian jurisdiction. Chinese medicine has a distinct identity within the context of the Australian plural medical system. Conversely, acupuncture, as one of the modalities of Chinese medicine—and in Western societies its principal modality—has been incorporated into various other heterodox medical subsystems, particularly chiropractic, osteopathy, and naturopathy, as well as conventional systems, such as biomedicine and physiotherapy.

The diversity within CAM use in the community, and the beliefs, concerns, and characteristics of the users of individual CAM modalities was explored via a survey mailed to a randomly selected sample of 1,308 people in different metropolitan and rural localities in Victoria, Australia. The response rate was 40% ( n = 459). The respondents' overall current CAM use was 52% and lifetime use was 85%. Chiropractic (50%), massage therapy, (50%), and vitamin or herbal supplements (39%) were the most frequently used modalities. A set of beliefs labeled holistic health care beliefs strongly predicted the use of Natural Remedy and Wellness modalities. Users of these modalities were more likely to be female, under the age of 60, and tertiary educated. Rurality characteristics did not predict rural CAM usage and were equally present in metropolitan and rural respondents. The respondents' decisions concerning CAM involved choosing a modality that fit their self-assessed health care needs.

This article explores whether complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) users view CAM as a unified concept or individualize the modalities. A survey about the beliefs and concerns surrounding the use of 22 CAM modalities was posted to a random sample of 1,308 people in five rural and two metropolitan localities in Victoria, Australia. The response rate was 40% (n = 459). Overall, 91% of respondents were found to either have used one CAM modality (85%, n = 386) or be open to future use (6%, n = 33). Respondents did not view CAM as a unified concept. Each modality was used by people with different characteristics and beliefs about health care. However, it was practical to divide the 22 CAM modalities into four categories that we have named natural remedy, wellness, accepted, and established modalities. The four categories lie along a set of continua extending from natural remedy modalities and ‘‘holistic health care’’ beliefs at one end to established modalities and a belief in the tenets of conventional medicine at the other. We were able to develop a model to show this diagrammatically.

BACKGROUND:The use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) to manage pregnancy-related conditions is becoming increasingly popular. This article draws on a qualitative study that aimed to explain the processes midwives engaged when determining the role of these therapies for pregnancy care.METHODOLOGY:Our study used grounded theory methodology. Twenty-five midwives, who were employed in metropolitan hospitals situated in Victoria, Australia, participated in the study. Data was collected from semistructured interviews and nonparticipant observation of a subgroup over an 18-month period.RESULTS:Midwives’ attitudes and behavior toward the CAM was influenced by their professional ideology and knowledge. When participants considered the role of these therapies, they employed various strategies including aligning CAM with midwifery philosophy, using the therapies to increase women’s options, valuing diverse ways of understanding and seeking out professional knowledge.CONCLUSIONS:Although midwives do not reject conventional medicine, many value the opportunity CAM offers to individualize care and promote natural childbearing.

On 22 June 1988 the then Minister for Community Services Victoria, Race Matthews, officially launched the Youth Attendance Order (YAO), a high tariff alternative for young offenders aged between 15 and 18 years who were facing a term of detention. Throughout the order's gestation, much debate occurred about the impact it would have on rates of juvenile incarceration as well as about the potential ‘net widening’ effect it could have on less serious offenders. In May 1994 the National Centre For Socio-Legal Studies at La Trobe University submitted its report evaluating the Victorian Youth Attendance Order. This article presents some of the major findings of that report and examines the future options for this high tariff order in juvenile justice.

There is limited evidence suggesting the underlying reasons for the use of complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs) by people with HIV/AIDS, or individual attitudes and beliefs about the use of CAMs. Using focus groups and a survey with 151 individuals attending the HIV Clinics at The Alfred Hospital, Melbourne, we aimed to provide insights into factors that influence the use of CAMs among people living with HIV/AIDS. Roughly half (49%) of the participants had used CAMs to manage their HIV/AIDs. Users of CAMs utilized a wide range of treatments in managing their condition, but costs of the CAMs meant that users were not necessarily able to use them as much as they might have liked. Use of CAMs was based on a desire to find something beneficial rather than on being dissatisfied with conventional medicine. Further research is needed into (a) the effects of CAMs and (b) the enhancement of communication and collaboration between patients, doctors and complementary medicine practitioners.

The objective of this article is to explore complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) users' reliance on health service providers, different forms of media, and interpersonal contacts for their health-needs information. To explore this information, a survey was posted to a random sample of 1,308 people in five rural and two metropolitan localities in Victoria, Australia. The response rate was 40% ( n = 459). The overall current CAM use was 52% and lifetime use was 85%. We found that the CAM users obtained most of their health needs information from doctors and CAM practitioners, whereas the Internet and health food shops served as the least useful sources of information. The respondents who used the modalities we labeled as natural remedy modalities accessed the most health information. The study results show that although conventional medicine may question some types of health care information that forms the basis of respondents' decision making, their health care decisions are nevertheless informed decisions.

We have performed a broad-ranging analysis of the adjuvant effect of a Kampo medicine, juzentaihoto (JTT), on influenza vaccination in a multicenter randomized controlled trial. In this study, the enhancing effect of JTT on antibody titer after influenza vaccination was studied for 28 weeks in elderly people who were in the high-risk group for influenza infection. In total, 91 subjects over 65 years old were recruited from four long-term-care facilities located in Chiba, Gunma, and Toyama prefectures in Japan. Participants were randomly assigned to the JTT and the control groups. Blood samples were taken at 4 weeks before vaccination, at the time of vaccination, and then at 4, 8, 12, and 24 weeks after vaccination. The hemagglutination inhibition (HI) titers against A/California/7/2009 (H1N1), A/Victoria/210/2009 (H3N2), and B/Brisbane/60/2008 were then manually measured. A significant increase in HI titer against H3N2 was observed at week 8 after vaccination in the JTT group compared with the control group (P=0.0229), and the HI titer of the JTT group significantly increased from 4 to 24 weeks (P=0.0468), compared with the control group. In conclusion, our results indicated that JTT increased and prolonged antibody production against A/Victoria/210/2009 (H3N2), in particular, after influenza vaccination.

This chapter suggests, contrary to views such as those expressed in Terry Eagleton’s Heathcliff and the Great Hunger (1995), that political economy was not ‘a gross, materialist language, heavy with biological ballast’, but rather a set of abstractions based on moral judgement and laissez-faire approaches to wealth and well-being. Looking at the major works that pioneered dietetics, gut physiology, and hunger therapeutics, it sets out how scientists, surgeons, and doctors offered an alternative narrative of hunger as unnecessary, unjust, and unnatural. Comparing understandings of famine and sickness during the Irish Hunger against the ill-assumed confidence of statisticians, Chapter 1 also studies how science developed a critically sophisticated, multi-textured mode of exploring the meanings, languages, and repercussions of hunger.

Chronic fatigue syndrome is a controversial condition, conflicts about which have frequently burst out of the medical literature into the popular media. Whilst these controversies may initially seem to be of limited interest to those who do not routinely treat such patients, they also exemplify important current issues in medicine. These issues include the nature of symptom-defined illness; patient power versus medical authority; and the uncomfortable but important issues of psychological iatrogenesis. The subject is therefore of relevance to all doctors. Fatigue is a subjective feeling of weariness, lack of energy, and exhaustion. Approximately 20 per cent of the general population report significant and persistent fatigue, although relatively few of these people regard themselves as ill and only a small minority seek a medical opinion. Even so, fatigue is a common clinical presentation in primary care. When fatigue becomes chronic and associated with disability it is regarded as an illness. Such a syndrome has been recognized at least since the latter half of the last century. Whilst during the Victorian era patients who went to see doctors with this illness often received a diagnosis of neurasthenia, a condition ascribed to the effect of the stresses of modern life on the human nervous system the popularity of this diagnosis waned and by the mid-twentieth century it was rarely diagnosed (although the diagnosis subsequently became popular in the Far East—see Chapter 5.2.1). Although it is possible that the prevalence of chronic fatigue had waned in the population, it is more likely that patients who presented in this way were being given alternative diagnoses. These were mainly the new psychiatric syndromes of depression and anxiety, but also other labels indicating more direct physical explanations, such as chronic brucellosis, spontaneous hypoglycaemia, and latterly chronic Epstein–Barr virus infection. As well as these sporadic cases of fatiguing illness, epidemics of similar illnesses have been occasionally reported. One which occurred among staff at the Royal Free Hospital, London in 1955 gave rise to the term myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), although it should be emphasized that the nature and symptoms of that outbreak are dissimilar to the majority of those now presenting to general practitioners under the same label. A group of virologists and immunologists proposed the term chronic fatigue syndrome in the late 1980s. This new and aetiologically neutral term was chosen because it was increasingly recognized that many cases of fatigue were often not readily explained either by medical conditions such as Epstein–Barr virus infection or by obvious depression and anxiety disorders. Chronic fatigue syndrome has remained the most commonly used term by researchers. The issue of the name is still not completely resolved however: Neurasthenia remains in the ICD-10 psychiatric classification as a fatigue syndrome unexplained by depressive or anxiety disorder, whilst the equivalent in DSM-IV is undifferentiated somatoform disorder. Myalgic encephalomyelitis or (encephalopathy) is in the neurological section of ICD-10 and is used by some to imply that the illness is neurological as opposed to a psychiatric one. Unfortunately the case descriptions under these different labels make it clear that they all reflect similar symptomatic presentations, adding to confusion. Official UK documents have increasingly adopted the uneasy and probably ultimately unsatisfactory compromise term CFS/ME. In this chapter, we will use the simple term chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).