What is Therapy or Therapeutic?
Rumali opened her new beauty parlor at the heart of town. She has graduated as beauty therapist from a reputed college. Among several customers one of the friends, Bipasa, contacted her for beauty therapy, which is a combined treatment procedure e.g. facial treatment, manicures, pedicures, waxing etc, so that Bipasa's physical appearance, self image can be improved.
Ritesh, friend of Bipasa, feeling depressed after his recent setback in his last attempt in the UPSC exam. Cognitive (thinking) Behavioral Therapy (CBT) or psychotherapy or talk therapy is suitable to overcome depression and its associated negative thoughts like committing suicide. Art therapy, music therapy, yoga therapy etc are also in use to improve physical and mental health of a person.
Ritesh’s grandfather had a severe stroke last year, so he is now under Occupational therapy (OT) and physiotherapy as per the suggestions of his doctor friend Dr Mitra. In OT, trained healthcare professionals guide the patient to perform everyday activities to treat the emotional, mental or physical illness. Occupational therapy and physiotherapy have some areas of overlap. A stroke patient needs physiotherapy to rebuild strength of paralised organ and OT shall help him/her relearning to write if arm is paralised. All this is done to improve the self esteem of the patient and to have better integration with family and society. Dr Mitra’s wife is an oncologist. Oncology is a field of healthcare where the study and treatment of tumours in the body is done.
Ritesh’s grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year. She had undergone surgery in the battle against cancer and was under palliative therapy using therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals. Palliative care is a branch of science which is focused on improving the quality of life of patients with serious illness like cancer. It can be as small as giving a hat to patients who are losing their hair due to chemotherapy or injecting bone seeking radiopharmaceuticals to reduce pain. This branch of therapy (Palliative therapy) also aims to improve the self esteem of the patients. It is required for cardiovascular diseases (38.5%), cancer (34%), chronic respiratory diseases (10.3%), AIDS (5.7%) and diabetes (4.6%). Among the patients who need palliative care, the most common and serious symptoms are Pain and difficulty in breathing. Therapeutic Radiopharmaceuticals are used for cure, disease control, or pain palliation [F. F. (Russ) Knapp et al] and their examples are sodium iodide (I-131) for treatment of thyroid cancer and Strontium chloride (Sr-89) for the relief of bone pain associated with skeletal metastasis [Volkert et al].
So from this discussion it appears that the word ‘therapy’ or ‘therapeutic’ has a meaning more than just curing.
Lets see what dictionaries say about the meaning:
As per oxford dictionary therapy (noun): the treatment of a physical problem or an illness. As per Cambridge dictionary therapy is treatment that helps someone feel better, grow stronger, etc., especially after an illness or treatment to help a person get better from the effects of a disease or injury. As per oxford dictionary ‘treatment’ (noun) means something that is done to cure an illness or injury, or to make somebody look and feel good.
As per oxford dictionary therapeutic (therapeuein) (adjective) is the branch of medicine concerned with the treatment of disease and the action of remedial agents. As per collins english dictionary Definition of 'therapeutic' is, it helps you to relax or to feel better about things, especially about a situation that made you unhappy. Therapeutic treatment is designed to treat an illness or to improve a person's health, rather than to prevent an illness.
As we all know "prevention is better than cure". Therapeutic medicines do not prevent an illness (e.g. stopping the root cause of cancer) but improves a person's health so that he/she feels better (by removing/destroying the cancerous cells and/or palliative care).
"Prevention
is Better Than
Cure"
‘Therapy’ or ‘Therapeutic’ is more than just curing but also about caring.
Conclusion
So in conclusion ‘Therapy’ or ‘Therapeutic’ is Curative as well as Palliative.
" Cure and Care"
Also read
https://www.scientificdiary.net/p/list-of-all-posts.html
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