2005 Volume 45 Issue 7 Pages 495-503
In recent years, the improvement of professional standards within complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) has been paralleled by increased public interest and patronage. Two identical surveys of unconventional medicine use in the United States by Eisenberg, one done in 1992 and the other in 1997, showed that during that time frame CAM use had increased from 34% to 42%, and Americans spent more out-of-pocket for CAM than they paid out-of-pocket for all hospitalizations. In 1992, the office of alternative medicine (OAM) was founded in the National Institute of Health (NIH) in the U.S. on the 2 milliondollar budget per year. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) was established as one of the 27 institutes and centers that make up NIH by Congress in 1998. NCCAM funding appropriated for each fiscal year increased dramatically to 104.6 million dollars in 2002. One of the CAM modalities, "Mind-body medicine" is characterized by a philosophical commitment to whole-person care. Its origins are founded in ancient and holistic healing traditions, which strive for unity of mind, body, and spirit. Integrative medicine is renewing the soul of medicine by combining the advances of science and technology in Western medicine training with the whole person approach of traditional healing systems. Health care system in the West is shifting from "disease oriented" to "health generated", which means the preventive medicine and health promotion with CAM will be regarded in the medical system. In recent years, integrative medicine combines mainstream medical therapies and CAM therapies for which there is some high-quality scientific evidence of safety and effectiveness. Historically, "Shinshinigaku" of Japan came from the US as "psychosomatic medicine", and has developed in the Japanese cultural background. But the meaning of the word "psychosomatic medicine" in the U.S has changed. "Mind-body medicine" or "integrative medicine" is more suitable for the translation of "shinshinigaku" than "psychosomatic medicine". I describe in this paper that it is necessary to regard the "shinshinigaku" in the U.S. as a new framework "integrative medicine" or "mind-body medicine".
