Focus on Alternative and Complementary Therapies
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Focus Alternat Complement Ther©2005 Pharmaceutical Press
Focus Altern Complement Ther 2005; 10: 48–9
Asthma is the most common chronic disease in the UK. Many asthma patients experience significant morbidity and report problems with their conventional care. A qualitative study aimed to investigate why patients and parents of children with asthma turn to CM and the implications of this for the NHS.
Thirty-one interviews were conducted with patients and parents using CAM for asthma (12 adults and 19 child/parent pairs) recruited from various healthcare settings. Data were analysed thematically.
Two themes were especially prominent. First, the desire for self-help strategies: patients and parents often wanted strategies to empower them/their children to control asthma, rather than letting asthma control them. This particularly emerged from those using breathing techniques (e.g. the Buteyko method). The flipside of this was a desire for reduced dependence on medication, with particular concerns about steroids. Second, the desire for a deeper understanding of the reasons for asthma: patients and parents often sought a broader perspective and more information on triggers (e.g. environmental, dietary, emotional). Patients appreciated the detailed discussion of asthma and its triggers during Buteyko breathing courses. Homoeopathy consultations were valued for their broader perspective on causes and attention to patients’ ‘constitutional’ susceptibility to asthma, enabling the exploration of deeper questions that conventional medicine seemed unable to answer.
The NHS is increasingly promoting patients’ self-management of chronic illness. For asthma, this has focused on guided plans on symptom monitoring and medication use, provided by health professionals. CAM use may be an under-recognised component of asthma patients’ own self-management.
This study is being conducted as part of a post-doctoral fellowship funded by the Department of Health.
