Holistic

The word holism

The word holism is credited to Jan Smuts, the South African statesman and botanist, who used it in Holism and Evolution, published in 1926. William Sweet reports that Smuts wrote the roughly 350-page book in about eight months after his 1924 electoral defeat, that it was widely reviewed but had little lasting scholarly impact, and that it introduced a new term into popular discourse.

Sweet reads the book as reflecting philosophical idealism and notes that Smuts denied it was a treatise on philosophy. Bruno Hamnell's history of the term finds that holism circulated mainly in academia, across ecology, psychology, medicine, social science, pedagogy and philosophy, until a public breakthrough around 1980.

How the meaning shifted

Hamnell reports that the connotations of holism changed over time, from associations with totalitarianism in the interwar era to associations with environmentalism and New Age spirituality since the 1970s. The older meaning was mainly epistemic, a claim about how wholes should be studied. The everyday health meaning, attention to the whole person, is a later development.

The holistic health movement and its organizations

Loretta Kopelman and John Moskop surveyed the holistic health movement in 1981 and described five shared assumptions: health as well-being, individual responsibility for health, the importance of health education, control of social and environmental determinants of health, and reliance on low-technology natural therapies. They also compared it with holism in biology and the social sciences.

The Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine gives its own account of the organizations. Physicians gathered in 1977 at Meadowlark in Hemet, California; Norman Shealy became first president of the American Holistic Medical Association, and its first meeting was held in Denver in 1978. After the 1980 conference, Charlotte McGuire, a nurse, was encouraged to start a nursing group, and the American Holistic Nurses Association held its first national meeting in 1981. The Academy was formed in 2013 and merged with the Academic Collaborative for Integrative Health in 2021. No independent history of these organizations was found among the sources reviewed.

Definitions from named bodies

The World Health Organization Constitution, adopted on 22 July 1946 and in force from 7 April 1948, defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health describes whole person health as helping individuals, families, communities and populations improve their health in multiple interconnected domains: biological, behavioral, social and environmental.

The American Holistic Nurses Association describes holistic nursing as all nursing practice aimed at the healing of the whole person, and states that the American Nurses Association recognizes it as a nursing specialty.

Holistic, integrative, complementary and alternative

The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health uses complementary for non-mainstream approaches used together with conventional medicine, alternative for those used in place of it, and integrative health for bringing conventional and complementary approaches together in a coordinated way with an emphasis on treating the whole person. The page defining these terms does not itself use the word holistic.

A federal survey report from the National Center for Health Statistics describes complementary health as the use of holistic or unconventional medicine with mainstream Western medicine, which shows the words being used loosely together. Complementary and alternative describe a relationship to conventional care, while holistic describes the scope of attention. On this site the labels are assigned practice by practice, and a page can carry several: Naturopathy carries Alternative, Complementary and Holistic, Mindfulness carries Complementary and Holistic, and Reiki carries Metaphysical and Complementary.

The biopsychosocial model

George Engel argued in Science in 1977 that the dominant biomedical model leaves no room for the social, psychological and behavioral dimensions of illness, and proposed a biopsychosocial model as a framework for research, teaching and care. The proposal came from within academic medicine, which is one reason the idea of attending to the whole person is not unique to practices carrying the holistic label.

Contested and loosely used

A 2025 scoping review of whole person health found little consensus on which domains belong in the concept, and noted that whole person health as an outcome is often conflated with whole-person care as a process. A 2025 Milbank Quarterly review reached a similar position about measurement. Kopelman and Moskop offered criticisms of each of the movement's core assumptions. The sources reviewed did not study how the word holistic is used in marketing, so that criticism is not documented here beyond the general promotional-language caution under Safety and Suitability.

Practices that carry the label on this site

Many practices on the site carry the Holistic label, spanning body, breath, attention, nature and whole systems of care. Among movement and body practices, Yoga is described on its page as a South Asian system of physical, breathing and meditative practices now taught mainly as postural exercise, Tai chi as a Chinese martial art practiced as slow movement sequences coordinated with breathing, Qigong as Chinese practices combining slow movement, breath control and focused attention, and Massage as a family of hands-on methods that apply pressure and movement to soft tissues. The Alexander Technique and the Feldenkrais Method are educational or somatic methods concerned with habitual movement.

Among breath and attention practices, Breathwork is a group of practices in which a person deliberately changes the pattern of breathing, Pranayama is the yogic practice of regulating the breath, Meditation is a family of practices that cultivate attention and awareness, and Mindfulness is a family of attention-based practices and group programs derived from Buddhist meditation. Forest Bathing and Labyrinth Walking are slow, sensory or contemplative practices in natural or designed settings. Naturopathy is described as a system of care built on diet, lifestyle, herbs, water treatments and other non-drug methods, and Ayurvedic self-massage as oil massage applied to the person's own body.

Nursing, palliative care and professional bodies

Holistic nursing is the clearest professional use of the term; the American Holistic Nurses Association states that it is a nursing specialty recognized by the American Nurses Association and practiced across settings. The World Health Organization describes palliative care as addressing physical, psychosocial and spiritual problems with a team approach, although its fact sheet does not use the word holistic.

The Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine describes a shared holistic philosophy that prioritizes whole health and links it to social and cultural determinants, and says it brings holistic physicians, nurses, naturopathic doctors, chiropractors and acupuncturists into one organization.

What proponents describe

Advocates of the holistic health movement, as summarized by Kopelman and Moskop, describe aims such as well-being rather than the absence of disease, personal responsibility for health, health education, attention to social and environmental influences, and reliance on low-technology natural therapies. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health describes its whole person health framework as empowering individuals, families and communities to improve their health in several connected domains.

The Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine presents the aim as a shared philosophy of prioritizing whole health, including the social and cultural factors that influence it. These are statements of aims by organizations and are not findings.

Why people use it

The survey report reviewed here measures how many adults use yoga, meditation and chiropractors but, in the parts read, does not report the reasons people give. No survey of motives for seeking holistic care as a whole was found among the sources reviewed, so reasons are not stated on this page.

Promotional language

The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health advises caution with promotional wording, naming phrases such as scientific breakthrough, secret ingredient and ancient remedy, and adds that a claim that sounds too good to be true usually is. The page does not single out the word holistic.

What was searched and found

Searches were run on PubMed for whole person care models combined with systematic review, for whole person health reviews, and for national survey data on complementary approaches, along with web searches for the histories of the two holistic associations. The results listed were mostly conceptual, measurement or informatics papers. No systematic review comparing outcomes of holistic care as a single model was found among them.

A 2025 scoping review searched five databases and gray literature and found 1,143 unique sources, of which 29 were eligible. Eleven conceptual articles each mentioned four to six of seven domains: biological or physical, behavioral or mental, social, environmental, spiritual, socioeconomic and individual. Six self-report measures were found, and the authors concluded that none was suitable for broad use.

A 2025 Milbank Quarterly review examined 281 instruments, of which only five assessed all nine domains it identified, and found no consensus on an ideal whole person health instrument. It described a shift to whole health care as needing changes in payment, care delivery and measurement.

How common use is

National Health Interview Survey data in a 2018 report show that, among US adults, yoga use rose from 9.5% in 2012 to 14.3% in 2017, meditation from 4.1% to 14.2%, and use of chiropractors from 9.1% to 10.3%. Women were more likely than men to use all three in 2017. These figures concern three named approaches and not the holistic label.

Evidence differs by practice

The label groups practices with very different evidence, from movement and breath practices to whole systems of care. Evidence has to be read practice by practice, and the pages for individual practices such as Yoga, Meditation, Mindfulness and Naturopathy give the available findings. This page does not state that the holistic label, or holistic care as a whole, is effective or ineffective.

The label is not a quality marker

The label describes scope of attention and does not indicate quality, training or safety. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health states that natural does not necessarily mean safe, that people respond differently to products and practices, that supplements may interact with medicines, and that ingredients and manufacturing quality matter for dietary supplements. It advises telling all providers, complementary and conventional, about every approach in use.

Delay or refusal of conventional care

A retrospective cohort study in JAMA Oncology used the US National Cancer Database to compare 258 patients with curable cancers whose records showed unproven treatment by non-medical personnel alongside conventional therapy with 1,032 matched patients. Refusal of recommended conventional treatment was far more common in the first group, and five-year survival was lower. After accounting for refusal and delay, the survival difference was no longer statistically significant, which the authors interpreted as mediation by treatment refusal.

The study did not examine holistic care as such, did not record which approaches were used, and was observational, so it cannot show cause. It is cited for one documented care boundary: choosing an unproven approach in place of recommended treatment is associated with worse outcomes in that setting.

Talking with a clinician and checking training

The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health advises discussing an approach with providers before deciding to use it, not postponing a visit about a condition because of an unproven practice, and talking with providers before deciding against a conventional treatment. Urgent symptoms need prompt medical care. Holistic nursing is a recognized nursing specialty, but the sources reviewed do not show whether the word holistic is a protected title for other practitioners, and no statutory regulation or single training standard for the label was found.