Patricia Wassall practises homeopathy at her clinic in Lisburn. Through her treatments, Patricia believes she can boost the immune system of patients to help them fight off disease. She said: "Homeopathy seeks to treat each person individually. The intention is that as well as managing current symptoms, you are also raising the vitality of each individual. So their immune system rebalances and they are better able to throw symptoms off themselves. Therefore, as their level of health rises they are less susceptible to other diseases".
According to Patricia, homeopathy is a system of medicine based on the principal of “like being treated with like”. She added: "It means if a substance recalls a set of symptoms in a healthy person, you could treat that same set of symptoms when somebody comes with a disease".
Homeopathy can treat both chronic problems and less serious ailments. Patricia said: "A child came in with an earache and you can treat an earache very, very quickly using homeotherapy and reduce a fever very, very quickly. People who come in with long-term depression or disorders like fibromyalgia can respond very well to homeopathy remedies. I work quite a lot with depression and fibromyalgia".
The practitioner says homeopathy works very well in conjunction with other medication. "I mean you can’t just sweep in and take a person off their medication", explained Patricia, "I can’t take them off something that somebody else has put them on but this treatment is very stabilising for their mood. They no longer feel the need for the tablets and can go back and approach the GP who has put them on them and ask them to reduce that. Equally women who are going through menopause, if you have somebody who is on HRT and doesn’t want to be, you can treat them homoeopathically. It can rebalance their symptoms and their GP can take them off. A patient can continue to manage their symptoms until they reach a level of health that they are comfortable with that doesn’t need to be maintained by an external chemical".
Patricia thinks it's vital for general medicine and therapies like homeopathy to work together for the good of the patient. "It is essential for the NHS to offer people these complementary therapies", she said. "I think each individual should choose how they want to maintain their health. Somebody with depression should have the right to decide if they want to take chemicals to suppress their symptoms or actually take something to support them while they figure out what is disturbing them and come out the other side. They should be able to do that with complementary or conventional medicine, however they see fit".