ALTERNATIVE MEDICAL TREATMENT: REASONS FOR ITS SELECTION AND WAYS OF EVALUATING ITS EFFICACY

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM; usually defined in opposition to biomedicine or orthodox medicine) is use by part of the population (the percentage differs from country to country) exclusively or, more often, in addition to biomedical procedures. The causes of using alternative medicine may vary - from disappointment in biomedicine to preference of alternative medicine as a part of an alternative worldview philosophy in a broader context (Taves et al. 2018). Building on previous knowledge about the use of CAM, the authors address issues of the perception of CAM practices, ways of evaluating their effectiveness, and the role of creation of narrative about the faced problem as the part of coping with the given situation. The study is based on qualitative data from Slovakia.