Oral

Unlike most other APHA presentations, this panel intends to summarize a large body of work rather than a few studies and is designed to appeal to all healthcare practitioners and APHA members. Consumers and healthcare practitioners are bombarded with contradictory testimonials and anecdotes about herbs, supplements, and other non-prescription treatments that are marketed for mental health conditions. These complementary and alternative (“CAM”) approaches are used by at least 40% of consumers, often without advice from a healthcare practitioner, and many health care practitioners and consumers are not aware of the evidence of efficacy and safety that exists, constrained as it is by lack of an economic incentive for manufacturers to do reliable research. There is no Physician's Desk Reference or other reliable compendium of evidence-based analysis to help deal with the hype. Responding to this need, Mental Health America (“MHA”)has developed an outline reviewing the twenty most discussed promising CAM treatments for mental health conditions (based on the nine secondary sources identified by MHA) and will be hosting a website to make the evidence available to healthcare practitioners and the general public. MHA hopes that the 2013 APHA Annual Conference will help to launch the website by informing the APHA membership of the six most promising CAM treatments distilled from the outline. The promising practices have been selected based on the lack of uncontrollable side effects and the efficacy shown in preliminary studies, as discussed by the sources and in the meta-analyses, reviews and studies cited by them.

Session Objectives: Compare the efficacy, drug interactions and side effects of the six promising CAM treatments described in these abstracts. Discuss with the panel and with colleagues the work needed to refine the outline and to make it accessible to consumers and practitioners. Describe at least two examples of misunderstandings about CAM treatments for mental health conditions and how the outline can be used to correct these misunderstandings.