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Placebo Effect
The Placebo Effect

A placebo is an inert substance that does not contain an active drug ingredient. The placebo effect is a psychosomatic phenomenon where we observe a beneficial change in the individual due to placebo manipulation. The nocebo effect is the opposite of the placebo effect, when a negative expectation or attitude leads to harmful or undesirable outcomes. For example, a patient taking a placebo drug may report having headaches, nausea or dizziness.
Most of the history of medicine until fairly recently has been a result of the placebo effect, given the fairly limited and inaccurate knowledge about human anatomy and infectious diseases. One explanation for the placebo effect is that expectation may lead to changes in behavior. …show more content…
There may be high occurrences of adverse side effects in patients receiving the placebo in double blind drug trials. According to a study by Mondaini et al. (2007), patients who were informed about the adverse sexual side effects of a prostate medication and were given placebos, reported significantly higher levels of erectile dysfunction and decreased libido than those who did not receive such …show more content…
Dr. Kirsch analyzed several clinical drug trials of antidepressants, and concluded that 75 percent of the effectiveness of SSRIs may be accounted by the expectations of improvement (Kirsch and Sapjrstein, 1988). Distinguishing between mild, moderate and severe depression, Kirsch claims that while mild and moderate types of depression can be treated with placebos, only patients with severe depression need to be treated with SSRIs, or sometimes even
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