Attitudes, awareness and self-use of complementary therapies among Spanish health sciences, journalism, and primary teacher training students

• Autores: Emilia Hermelinda Lopera Pareja, Carolina Moreno Castro
• Localización: Ludus vitalis: revista de filosofía de las ciencias de la vida = journal of philosophy of life sciences = revue de philosophie des sciences de la vie, ISSN 1133-5165, Vol. 28, Nº. 53, 2020, págs. 1-26
• Idioma: varios idiomas
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• Resumen

  • In Spain, during the last decade, there has been an intense debate between advocates of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and a skeptical movement. Neither are these therapies integrated into the public health system nor have practitioner training courses been regulated. Notwithstanding this, their use is on the increase in Spain, as can be seen in the last public opinion survey (CIS, 2018). Thus, the objective of this work is to explore the attitudes towards and awareness and self-use of CAM among health sciences, journalism and primary teacher training students. These students were chosen since they will play a fundamental role as storytellers of evidence-based science for the foreseeable future. To perform the study, 234 students were asked to complete a Spanish version of the CAM Health Belief Questionnaire (CHBQ). The results show that, by and large, they had a positive attitude towards CAM, despite that fact that the journalism and health sciences students admitted to being wary of them to a certain extent. Four out of the five best known and most used CAM modalities among the respondents fell into the ‘mental and corporal practices’ category, i.e., yoga, massage, meditation and relaxation.