Relief, risk and renewal: mixed therapy regimens in an Australian suburb

In recent decades, health care has been transformed by the proliferation of non-biomedical therapies that are mostly unsupported by government-authorised systems of health care, and are referred to in the health social science literature by terms such as "alternative" or "complementary" medicine, or the acronym "CAM". From the perspective of users, who are often pluralistic and pragmatic in their orientation to healing modalities, "mixed therapy regimens" is a less dichotomised and more appropriate conceptualisation of the process of seeking health care from diverse sources of expertise. This paper reports on an anthropological study of residents of an Australian suburb, where it was found that 24% of interviewees in a community-based sample reported they or members of their household had used non-biomedical therapies. It was found that users of mixed therapy regimens regard the felt effectiveness of therapies to be more important than legitimacy deriving from a professionalised scientific knowledge system. "Natural" therapies, variously defined (and including vitamins), are valued as a counterweight to forms of disability and malaise that are often associated with risks of modern life. Pharmaceuticals (especially prescription products), by contrast, were not infrequently subjected to radical critique and various forms of practical resistance. The contrast between pharmaceuticals and "natural" therapies in many residents' accounts points to the moral criteria that are an important dimension along which the effectiveness of care is evaluated. "Natural" remedies and mixed therapy regimens can also be interpreted as antidotes for the experience of living in a "risk society", part of a project of resistance to the hazards of modernity carried out at the site of the body.