BACKGROUND The ideal concept of Aboriginal holistic health is centrally placed in Australian Aboriginal health policies and strategies. Its effective uptake promises, as advocates suggest, reorienting the complex Australian health system to enable health improvements. However, continual reminders assail us that Aboriginal health is shocking, appalling, disastrous, disgraceful and damning. Could...

Quality of Life Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark, Research Clinic for Holistic Medicine and Nordic School of Holistic Medicine, Copenhagen, Denmark, Scandinavian Foundation for Holistic Medicine, Sandvika, Norway, Interuniversity College, Graz, Austria, Division of Adolescent Medicine, Kentucky Children‘s Hospital, University of Kentucky, Lexington, United States of America, National Instit...

The paper aims to contribute to integrated discussion of ethics in holistic healthcare. Methods: Noting key aspects of the literature on ethics in holistic healthcare, the authors then focus on describing the working ethical statement for holistic healthcare practitioners produced for the International Society of Holistic Health (ISHH). Ethical principles, aims of holistic practice, and ethical...

The current practice of health education often fails to harmonize with the multidimensional, dynamic, and functional nature of health as generally defined within our profession. As a stepchild of the medical and public health professions, we have inherited a preoccupation with physical health as the most worthy outcome measure for most of our programs. Yet other dimensions of health seem equall...

The importance of the promotion and the protection of physical and recently mental health is globally well recognized, but little attention has been given to the interrelationship between the two. Poor physical health can make individuals susceptible to poor mental health. Similarly, we know that people living with mental health problems often live with physical health problems as well. A growi...

This article summarizes the scientific assumptions of medicine and holistic practice as a basis for clarifying the professional responsibilities of health practitioners. The basic elements of contracting are then applied 10 the dynamics of clinical relationships, creating a mutually defined plan as framework for allocating responsibility among doctors, patients, holistic practitioners and clien...

This paper describes the Biopsychosocial Theory and contrasts it to the traditional theories of addiction. Included in the discussion is how the new theory incorporates the strengths of the older traditional theories while remaining a distinct entity with a unique set of hypotheses, and the addition of the spiritual dimension, which, from the Alcohol and Drug Services’ (ADS) perspective, has ge...

Health and diseases are two states of a living organism defined by and understood through many physiological process. The absence of disease is not healthy, as much as the reverse, namely the absence of health, is not disease either. These two end points are connected through a continuum in which a person moves constantly.Health also refers to the psychosomatic equilibrium as well as the person...