Celebrating National Complementary Therapy Week 2020

This week, we are celebrating National Complementary Therapy Week for the first time and we could not have picked a worst week. But who could have foreseen the unprecedented situation we all find ourselves in even 3 months ago, let alone 12 months ago when we booked this in with the national awareness days program of events. Needless to say, all therapists have had to close their practices in order to safeguard their clients and themselves and all our accredited training establishments have had to suspend classes for the time being. Only this morning at the CHP office, we have had to cancel exams set for July as students are unable to complete case studies on anyone except their partners. We had events planned at the Mulberry Centre, as we were supporting complementary therapies in cancer this year as of course other planned events therapists had in place to celebrate their profession and promote their services have had to be cancelled. As most therapists are self-employed, they are all effectively out of work at the moment and many are worried that the government is not supporting them in the same way as employed people are. These are in fact very difficult times for our profession. However, we can still celebrate the amazing therapies we all practice from the comfort of our homes, where we are all practising social distancing. Like me, many therapists are offering online support for their clients, even if it is just the offer of phone support for anyone who is one of the 1.5 million who have been told by the NHS this week to self-isolate for 12 weeks. Many of our elderly clients live alone and a friendly supportive voice or video chat can be really helpful.

What is Complementary Therapy?

If you have never tried any of the complementary therapies you may be forgiven for thinking they are nothing more than a luxury or for people who are a bit weird! Once you have tried it for yourself you will soon realise that therapists are highly trained professionals who work alongside conventional medicine to support your wellbeing in a way that a medical profession cannot, and does not have the time for. We support mainstream medicine. Our profession is therefore quite different to the beauty therapy industry whose work is just as important in making you feel good about yourself, but they are not necessarily trained to work with complex medical conditions as we are.

According to Richard Eaton (2018) in an article published by the College of Medicine and Integrated Health, "there is evidence that the CAM can and does deliver cost-effective and valued therapies within the UK health and social care sectors". Integrated health is the way forward in the long term, where Complementary & Alternative Medicine (CAM) is used within mainstream healthcare settings to support the health and well-being of everyone who can benefit from it. Incidentally, the acronym CAM is already slightly outdated now as we do not consider ourselves "alternative" to medicine, which would be something outside of mainstream healthcare but more "complementary", in other words, working alongside it. In our profession, we do get rather frustrated when people spell complementary incorrectly! We often see it written as "complimentary", which of course has a whole other meaning, and as I said earlier, most of us are self-employed and despite many offering to volunteer their services for cancer services etc., we do have to make a living and cannot work for free! Complimentary means either "offering a praise or a compliment", or "given or supplied free of charge" (dictionary .com), so please spell our profession correctly!

There is a great deal of evidence available to prove the efficacy of our therapies and these are readily available on the internet and one really good source is Positive Health Magazine. There is also a huge amount of anecdotal information available from individual therapists who can share their success stories and the positive feedback from their clients. The majority of therapists rely of word of mouth for their businesses, which is why the really successful ones are always difficult to book in with. However clinicians within hospitals seem reluctant to accept any of the evidence and access to complementary therapies on the NHS is quite limited, although some do offer it such as the Royal Marsden in London (royalmarsden.nhs.uk/supportive-therapies/massage-therapy-and-reflexology). We need more of this and if a patient-led NHS is to become a reality, NHS professionals need to cede the power that they wield with evidence rhetoric and acknowledge the legitimacy of patient preferences, views and alternative sources of evidence (Wye et al 2009). This year we as an association are supporting the European Congress for Integrative Medicine 2020, which is scheduled to take place in London between 11th - 13th September (www.ecimcongress.com). This is all good for our profession and for more recognition of our therapies and how much they benefit people.

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