holistic medicine, a doctrine of preventive and therapeutic medicine that emphasizes the necessity of looking at whole individuals—their bodies, minds, emotions, and environments—rather than at isolated functions or organs. Holistic medicine promotes the use of a wide range of health practices and therapies. It has especially come to stress responsibility for “self-healing,” or “self-care,” by observing the traditional commonsense essentials of exercise, healthful diet, adequate sleep, good air, moderation in personal habits, and so forth.
The term holistic medicine became especially fashionable in the late 20th century (the International Association of Holistic Health Practitioners was founded in 1970, assuming its current holistic name in 1981). In its underlying philosophy, in emphasizing the provision of whole care to a person or patient, holistic medicine is not new, being inseparable from any traditional health care of good quality. Holistic medicine in extreme instances, however, has tended to equate the validity of a wide range of schools or approaches to health care, not all of them compatible and some of them competitive, some scientific and some unscientific. Although mainstream Western medical practices are not ignored, they are seen as only one part of the available therapies and by no means the only effective ones, a concept that has been embraced under the category of complementary and alternative medicine. Congresses and conferences on holistic health have thus drawn not only representatives of medical schools and institutions but also advocates of such widely varying concepts as acupuncture, alternative childbirth, astrology, biofeedback, chiropractic, faith healing, graphology, homeopathy, macrobiotics, megavitamin therapy, naturopathy, numerology, nutrition, osteopathy, psychocalisthenics, psychotherapy, Reiki, self-massage, shiatsu (or acupressure), touch encounter, and yoga.