CAMLAW : Complementary And Alternative Medicine Law Blog

What could be better than pretzels with St. John's Wort and potato chips with Echinacea?

The Textbook of Integrative Mental Health Care by James Lake, MD has just been released by Thieme Press.

This is a tribute to John E. Mack, MD, who has transitioned from his physical body to the next plane of consciousness. He was a colleague and explorer of the human experience who modeled insight, humor, and courage.

Integrative mental healthcare can be defined as integration in mental healthcare of conventional and complementary and alternative (CAM) therapies for which there is some high-quality scientific evidence of safety and effectiveness. The legally responsible and ethically defensible practice of complementary and alternative medical (CAM) approaches in mental health care is a fundamental concern.

What legal and ethical issues apply to spirituality in medical care generally as well as mental healthcare? Consider, for example, practices such as energy healing (Reiki, Therapeutic Touch, Polarity).

The same legal and ethical issues apply as they do to CAM generally, only they loom larger. For example, the following questions may arise concerning potential liability.

This just in from CAM and Psychiatry authority James Lake, M.D., affiliated with Stanford University School of Medicine: the APA (American Psychiatric Association) Caucus on CAM and integrative approaches in mental health care is up and running. The new Caucus (established May 2004) gathers together prominent psychiatrists exploring spirituality and mental health. Psychiatrists interested in participating in the Caucus should go to the new website at www.apacam.org . Below is the press release with more information. Thanks to James for a labor of love bringing these issues to the forefront. Together with other colleagues such as David Spiegel, M.D. also of Stanford University School of Medicine, James has been pioneering in helping to develop this area.

Here's a big secret: mental health care professionals already are practicing CAM under the guise of conventional medicine. Relaxation therapies, such as visualization and guided imagery, clinical hypnotherapy, and other modalities sometimes come under the label "mind-body."