Joav Merrick 
Alternative Medicine Research Yearbook 2013 

Classical medicine is about helping the patient back into happiness, good health and developing a constructive role in society by helping the patient to increase self-awareness and self-insight. The fruit of realizing your own talents and character is the experience of being of value to one self and other people – being of value in all relationships, private or professional. From the experience of this happy and constructive state of being comes all good things, a positive understanding of life, a positive state of consciousness, a positive state of existence and finally good physical and mental health, high quality of life, and excellent ability of functioning in all areas of life. Whether we call this classical medicine, "quality of life as medicine", consciousness-based medicine, character medicine, placebo medicine, holistic medicine or any other equivalent label, it is basically about helping the patient to know him or herself, and to live in accordance with this knowledge. This yearbook 2013 bring together the work we did over the past year with a broad research agenda on a global basis, addressing questions ranging from a discussion of positive youth development in Hong Kong to managed care. We hope this book will provide you with new knowledge, link research to practice and policy, help build networks of research collaborations and move science forward in this field.