Introduction to Behavioral and Alternative Medicine   [Archived Catalog]
2018-2019 Academic Catalog and Student Handbook with Spring Addendum
   

PH 517 - Introduction to Behavioral and Alternative Medicine


Complementary and alternative (C & A) practices are rapidly finding acceptance within the clinical community. Simultaneously, "accepted" practices are falling from favor as they are shown to be ineffective or even counterproductive. Patients now visit as many or more "alternative" providers as traditional providers and are spending billions of dollars on attempts to get care not available from the traditional medical community. This course is intended to provide students with a balanced overview of a selection of complementary and alternative medicine and behavioral medicine interventions recently and currently practiced in the "West". It is also intended to help students learn to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the claims made by the proponents of these practices so they can more readily separate the real knowledge from the emotional advertising. The course provides students with practice in and techniques for objectively assessing the validity of claims presented in formats different than usually acceptable to current "Western" science. 3 credit(s)