- Posted By: Vicki Barber
Radio 4 this week has ran an interesting programme on this topic, including highlighting some work from Professor Irene Tracy in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences based at the John Radcliffe, go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b052j0ty to listen.
Taken from the Radio 4 website:
"Whilst the placebo effect is now recognised as a useful therapeutic tool, less familiar is its malign counterpart: the nocebo effect, the capacity of an inert or sham treatment to induce adverse physical and mental effects. Geoff Watts explores the science behind this remarkable phenomenon and its worrying implications.
Acknowledged for decades, the placebo effect only became the subject of serious scientific study in the last ten years. Not only can sham treatments improve clinical outcomes, sometimes as powerfully as pharmacological interventions, but the method of giving the treatment can itself determine a placebo's success. Perception is everything. But if a placebo can reduce symptoms and enhance treatment then presumably the opposite is true. Welcome to the nocebo effect."