PART V. RESULTS

What We Know About the Effectiveness of Functional Systems Facilitation

“The HSM may be an applicable and potentially effective method for improving quality of life among people who feel a need for it. The HSM is especially effective in the group of patients with an initially low level of quality of life. The greatest improvement in quality of life is shown in the physical domain (+26.94%), the psychological domain (+25.31%), and social relationships (+18.07%), and in the overall score (+18.69%).”

— from my paper “The Result of the Practical Application of an Innovative Human Health Management System Developed on the Basis of Academician P. K. Anokhin’s Theory of Functional Systems” (Shamenkov, Ulyanin, Sudakov, 2014)

In Part IV, I explained why the components of Functional Systems Facilitation work together, and why the approach — as work with a living system — differs from classic training. Now comes the most practical question of all: what exactly do we know about the effectiveness of this approach?

Before turning to the numbers, I want to make one conceptual point about what should even count as a result in a living-systems method (chapter 20). After that come three levels of evidence, arranged in descending order of rigor and ascending order of context: direct quantitative data on FSF specifically (chapter 21), qualitative data and cross-cutting observations from practice (chapter 22), and corroboration through meta-analyses of related methods (chapter 23). Then I describe the scale of the program and the scientific infrastructure within which these results were gathered (chapter 24). And at the end, an honest look at the limits of the current evidence base (chapter 25).