Case Study In Integrative Medicine: Hannah T

The following is a case study from the multidisciplinary integrative medicine practice at the Beth Israel Center for Health and Healing in New York City. This case, that of a middle-aged woman with fatigue and recurrent inflammatory symptoms, originally published in the text Integrative Medicine: Principles for Practice,¹ illustrates some of the possibilities inherent in the integrative approach to health and illness. Our hope is that this case will illustrate how the diverse voices of the various healing arts, which compose the integrative healthcare team, can come together in a given case to offer an approach to treatment much more powerful than that which any of the disciplines can provide on their own. Of course, the manner in which this case was handled by our team represents only one of the many ways in which this patient's problems could have been effectively treated. Because we view the patient and/or the family as the primary decision maker on the healthcare team, our choices for therapies and approaches in this case were guided in large measure by the patient's previous experience, personal preferences, and intuition, as well as by our clinical experience and knowledge of the evidence. Different people presenting with this same set of problems could very well have been treated in dramatically different ways and still with potential benefit.