Complementary and alternative medicine and mental health

The global pandemic of serious mental illness is causing enormous social and economic consequences. Biomedicine and alternative medicine have disparate perspectives. Many factors are driving increased use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Available drug treatments of psychiatric disorders have limited effectiveness and safety problems. In response to the limitations of conventional care, CAM approaches are being increasingly used to treat mental health problems, and training of mental health care professionals is becoming more eclectic. Integrative mental health care combines conventional and alternative approaches and offers significant cost and clinical advantages over the conventional model of mental health care.