ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the important, unique and crucial contribution that complementary therapies can make within a healthcare approach that genuinely seeks to provide holistic and integrative care for the patient, and those who are supporting them, particularly during the palliative phase of illness. Individuals need to retain as much control over their lives as possible, and this is also true at times of illness, and in the presence of advancing disease. One of the most encouraging trends in healthcare lies in patient-led incentives concerning disease management information, along with greater involvement of patients in their own care at all stages of their illness experience. Complementary therapies are generally considered to be based within a philosophical model of holistic or whole-person healthcare. This proposes that each person is viewed as an organic intact whole, composed of inseparable dimensions identified as those related to the physical, intellectual, psychological, emotional, social and spiritual dimensions.
