The objective of this research was to investigate the use of complementary and spiritual therapies for cancer patients treated in a therapeutic-religious institution in the city of Florianópolis, the Center for Cancer Patient Support (CAPC). This institution offers complementary therapies, psychotherapeutic groups and "spiritual surgeries". Doctors, nurses, therapists and religious people work together in this institution. The participant observation method was used during fieldwork conducted over 15 months in the institution. Also, 21 semi-structured interviews with patients and volunteers from CAPC and its leaders were conducted. People being treated for cancer with the complementary/spiritual therapies offered by CAPC presented a diverse and plural understanding of care that does not work with the dichotomies of mind/body, biomedicine/complementary therapies to consider their processes of health and disease. Prevailing concepts that examine adherence to complementary/spiritual therapies based on the ideas of "belief," lack of access to official medical system, economic deprivation and/or inability of biomedicine to treat certain diseases were questioned because it was identified in research that such forms of therapy were used by people of different social classes and religious affiliations, in various stages of cancer, together with the biomedical treatment, and not as the "last option".
cancer; complementary therapies; spiritual therapies