Complementary, Alternative, and Indigenous Healing Systems

This course will explore the range of complementary, alternative, and indigenous healing traditions that are found in the United States, and how social work practitioners may collaborate with these various healing traditions. There are many healing systems that exist outside the dominant, Western, scientific health care system such as energy based healing (e.g. qigong, acupuncture, reiki, polarity, reflexology, iridology, etc.) and spirit based systems (e.g. spiritualism, espiritismo, curanderismo, santeria, voodoun, etc.). The underlying premise of the course reflects the principle that various forms of healing are central to clients' cultural values and that knowledge of healing traditions can increase the cultural sensitivity of social work practitioners to various client groups and improve the ability to collaborate with alternative healing practitioners. The course will look at practice case examples in which collaboration between Western credentialed professionals and indigenous healers was central to the helping process and also review the recent research on the efficacy of complementary healing practices that is being generated by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Complementary Medicine. This course is an elective and will be taught on a pass/fail grading system.