Screening and evaluating alternative and innovative psychiatric treatments: a contextual framework.

Alternative treatments are unconventional, unestablished, nontraditional, and often innovative. Innovative treatments may be mainstream or alternative. All psychiatric treatments, whether mainstream or alternative, whether psychosocial or "biological," can be classified in a framework based on the means used to beneficially impact the patient's brain. An imaginative and comprehensive perspective on therapeutic possibilities might derive from considering the broad array of sensory/perceptual transducer channels as well as media. Most treatments utilize a medium (energy, substance, person, or machine). A full classification should therefore include the general category or means, any media involved, any sensory transducers used, and any special techniques. A positive approach to nurturing innovation, especially in psychosocial treatments, might consider: (1) the study of neglected transducer channels, (2) mechanization/computerization of transducer input and other innovations of media, (3) a comparison of packaging options for information/feedback, and (4) a comparison of the effect of inputing a single sensory channel to the effect of inputting simultaneous multiple channels. Screens for promising new psychiatric treatments are proposed in response to one of the recommendations at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Workshop on Unconventional Medical Treatments held in September 1992. Two unscientific pitfalls must be skirted: embracing new or alternative treatments uncritically and rejecting them without fair examination; and they must be skirted without dissipating scarce research resources.