Editorial

Abstract

Traditional healers often use techniques common to self-regulations strategies common to mind-body medicine. Rituals that facilitate access to unconscious processes and use hypnotic states of consciousness predate modern medicine and can be tracked to early shamanistic practice. However, modern Western medicine can reduce complex psycho-physiological processes to overly simple or concrete concepts. Worse, human suffering can be relegated to simple and materialistic definitions that ignore the complexity of human social context. The concepts may be flawed, but if the concepts gain political and economic strength, it will hold sway in teh face of good science that proves it wrong. An example of this is the debate regarding teh sterotonergic theory of depression. Irving Kirsch conducted a meta-analysis of antidepressants using the freedom of information act to access buried data from pharmaceutical research. His findings question the use of "science" behind the multibillion-dollar industry.