[Are there differences in the assessment of medical and non-medical interventions?]

Usually medical and/or non-medical interventions are applied to treat both acute and chronic disease. The non-medical measures include a broad range of heterogeneous principles, among them surgical, physical, technical and psychological ones. Not uncommonly, these measures derive from particular theoretical concepts. They frequently involve complex interventions, that is, programmes with varying combinations of different interacting measures. It has been postulated by advocates of the so called complementary medicine that 'different treatment concepts and hence different assessment methods' not only do, but must exist. This claim will be examined in a four-step procedure, and it will be demonstrated that this claim cannot be maintained: 1) in the face of the German Social Code, Book V Para. 35b Sect. 1, 2) with respect to the required and available knowledge base, 3) against the background of professionally approved international standards of EbM and 4) the requirements of scientific acceptance of psychotherapeutic methods and procedures.