COMPLEMENTARY THERAPIES

Applied Approaches to Complementary Therapies/Foundation Degree

[Name of the Institute]

[Course Code]

Introduction2

Discussion3

Depression3

Causes and Risks4

Disease Management4

Preventive Measures5

Depression as Chronic Disease6

Complementary Therapies for Depression6

Nutritional Therapies7

Herbal Therapies7

Physical Therapies8

Other Complementary Therapies for the Treatment of Depression9

Depression Recovery Strategies11

Critique on Complementary Therapies11

Aromatherapy12

Physiological Effects of Emotional Aromas13

Massage and Aromatherapy13

Aromatherapy and Depression15

Conclusion17

References19

Applied Approaches to Complementary Therapies/Foundation Degree

Introduction

Complementary therapies are playing an important role with respect to the healthcare and employment opportunities for society. Complementary therapies being a Foundation Degree allows the students to build their skills rich in terms of technical, academic and business management expertise. The Foundation Degree in Applied approaches to complementary therapies brings opportunities for the students to develop their skills and required knowledge in the particular area of their interest with respect to the health and wellbeing of society.

The aim of complementary therapies is to treat the patients as a whole rather than their diseases. Complementary therapy also known as alternative therapy, and traditional therapy, and it includes acupuncture, aromatherapy, herbal medicines, reiki, and yoga. The conventional medicine and complementary therapy can work better besides to each other. However, it is important to that patients should tell each and every medicine to their doctor as well as to their complementary therapist, because sometimes these medicines interact with each other and produces adverse side effects. Therefore, this is the chief responsibility of patients that never take their own decisions about their medicines and therapies.

The increasing use of complementary therapy is the indication of its less invasive nature as well as cost effective mode of action as compared to the conventional medical treatments. The foundation of complementary therapy is based on the beliefs that major reason of illness is the disturbance of body balance; there should be the need to treat the whole patient, healing and balancing of body takes time, and natural product are much safer than the synthetic product for medical treatments. Studies show that the mostly users of complementary therapy includes educated women, high incomes people with long term disease conditions, many of the people use this kind of treatments because of their beliefs and traditions (BHC, 2012).

Discussion

Complementary therapy includes the treatment of long term diseases, which are also termed as a chronic condition, in which the disease is persistent for long duration that is the course of illness lasts for more than three months. The mostly commonly long term illnesses are cancer, asthma, arthritis, diabetes, psychological diseases and HIV/AIDS. The selected disease for further study in this respect is Depression (Ismail, 2011, pp. 24-25).

Depression

Depression is the feeling of sadness and miserable and many of the people feel this way for one day or for short durations. However, true clinical depression is consisted of mode disorder with sadness and it interferes with the daily tasks for some weeks or more than that. The exact major reason for the development of depression has not been identified yet, but researchers propose that chemical changes in the brain are responsible for depression as well as changes in the genetic makeup can ...