Sarah Cant

The rise and fall of complementary medicine in National Health Service hospitals in England.

Whilst Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) has never been systematically integrated into National Health Service (NHS) provision, there has been some limited evidence of a developing presence of CAM in NHS hospital based nursing and midwifery. This paper reports on a qualitative study that sought to document the nature and extent of such integrative practice in England, and the interpersonal and organisational factors that facilitated or impeded it. The data revealed a history in which attempts to integrate CAM had some initial success underpinned by the enthusiasm of individual practitioners and a relatively permissive organisational context. However, this was followed by a decline in service provision. The fact that the services were established by individuals left them vulnerable when more restrictive funding and governance regimes emerged. Whilst the data revealed a consistent story about CAM within the NHS, it must be recognised that the use of a snowball sample limits the generalizability of the findings.

Complementary and alternative medicine: gender and marginality

It is widely recognized by social scientists that over recent decades the popularity of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) has increased in the West, and that both users and practitioners are more likely to be women. Despite this, relatively little attention has been paid to explaining the relationship between gender and CAM, an omission this chapter seeks to address. In doing so, we will explore the apparent affinity between CAM, women’s health concerns and feminist agendas, and the extent to which CAM has the potential to create spaces for gender-sensitive healthcare. However, in practice this radical potential has been limited by the persistence of gendered power relations embedded within biomedicine, coupled with the position of ‘mainstream marginality’ (Cant, 2009) that CAM inhabits.

Hidden in plain sight: exploring men’s use of complementary and alternative medicine

Despite the increased attention given to the relationship between masculinity and health, the analysis of men’s use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is relatively underdeveloped compared with studies of female use. Through the thematic synthesis of existing research studies, this article collates and analyzes patterns of, and motivations for, male usage of CAM. We reveal that there are significant levels of male use of CAM, which cannot be explained by recourse to general or gendered patterns of health-seeking behavior or health status. Men who use CAM tend to exhibit similar demographic characteristics to female users, but also show patterns of engagement that both reinforce and challenge hegemonic masculinity. The article suggests that there remains a need to investigate the nuances and complexities of the motivations behind male usage patterns, and interrogate how these intersect with the performance of masculine selves.