Treatment seeking and experience with complementary/alternative medicine: a continuum of choice

To examine the treatment seeking patterns of conventional medicine (CM) and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) clients across different health problems, and to investigate whether CAM clients with different levels of experience with CAM use different modes of treatment for their health issues.

Three-group cross-sectional, self-administered survey study.

One hundred and ninety-nine (199) self-selected participants sampled from CM and CAM clinics and offices

Self-reported physical health problems, treatment seeking for health problems, and type of treatment used for each health problem (CM, CAM, or both) Results: Treatment rates for non-life-threatening health issues were significantly associated with client group membership after controlling for differences in the number of health problems (partial r = 0.35, p < 0.0001), with the more experienced CAM clients reporting the highest treatment rates and the CM clients reporting the lowest rates. The newer CAM clients also differed significantly from the more experienced CAM clients in the modes of treatment used for their health issues (p < 0.0001), with the less experienced CAM clients relying more on CM alone (42.0%) or in conjunction with CAM (38.3%), whereas the experienced CAM clients used more CAM with CM (45.0%), or CAM alone (33.5%) than just CM alone (21.5%), for treating their health issues.

CAM users may treat their health issues at higher rates than nonusers, independent of their greater number of health problems. This treatment rate increase may be associated with greater experience with CAM. CAM clients are not homogeneous in their choices of treatment modalities. Newer CAM users still rely heavily on CM treatments, whereas more experienced CAM users depend less on CM alone and more on CAM for treating their non-life-threatening health issues.