Active Placebo Experiment

In order to be able to treat a person with depression effectively, doctors have to sort out what kind of role the narcotics may play in the depression. If the feelings of depression is simply a part of a withdrawal due to a narcotic and are only something temporary, it is very unlikely that a antidepressant will be of any benefit. Antidepressants take a bare minimum of two to three weeks to begin working. The most effective treatment in such a case would be to try and help the person at hand to get their drug use under control or stop entirely. Both taking drugs and the withdrawal process may produce depressive symptoms themselves, makingit very difficult to know what it is that’s exactly going on, if it even seems that the depression led to taking drugs in the first place. As a result, It’s extremely vital to the treatment of the individual that the problem with narcotics is sorted out so that is will be possible to further judge whether antidepressants or other treatments used for depression will be needed. This, of course, does not mean it’s

The pertinent findings will be explained, and their implications on future anti-depressants will be addressed.

The American healthcare system needs to become more spiritual and use the wonders of one of its strongest assets, that asset is the placebo effect, we need to stop using the placebo effect just as a bench mark for drug companies. Instead we should implement its use in our healthcare system. The placebo effect can be used to enhance our healing, while it can also harm it if not implemented properly. This is one of the reasons why a greater connection between doctor and patient is required. Just like a shaman guides and individual through its spiritual and physical healing, our doctors need to implement the placebo effect and connect with us to guide us in the same matter a shaman would have. There many ways the placebo effect can enhance our

On the next part of the experiment, it was explained that Lithium is typically used to treat bipolar disorder and I was asked to answer why anti-depressants are not typically used to treat bipolar disorder, while they are used to treat depression. Anti-depressants are not typically used because if the patient is having a depressive episode, taking an anti-depressant can lead to a manic phase. Next in the experiment, I was given a schematic representation of Bipolar disorder and asked to manipulate the arrows on the graph to indicate what kind of effect Lithium has on depressive and manic episodes. I manipulated the arrows to move the line to create a straight line between graph

As the literature remains inconclusive as to the relation between current major treatment modalities and depressive disorder, and given the extremities of the potential dangers of antidepressant medications, it is apparent that there is a need to develop new interventions, which show greater efficacy, safety, and acceptability.

The placebo is a pill that contains no active ingredients, however appears to be the same as an actual drug. The placebo effect is when a person feels that the treatment they received has helped when in reality it was just a placebo. In modern medicine, patients feel as if they need a form of medication to cure their illness. According to the Huffington Post, research on the placebo effect that has been studied mainly on depression and migraines have seen a substantial benefit.[1]

Many people would have experienced their illness have been cured by taking inactive medication. Imagine that you are having a harsh flu, sitting in the waiting room of the hospital. As waiting for the nurse's call to see the doctor, you are feeling that your body is as heavy as an elephant, repeatedly sneezing and coughing. You are wishing that your turn is right next to try to distract yourself from your pain, and you are hoping whatever the doctor describes will work. After a long wait, you eventually see the doctor and take the medication that the doctor prescribed religiously. After a few weeks, you feel that you are feeling better and return to the doctor's room, and you realize that what you have been prescribed

Torok, an author to another study regarding Ménière's Disease, reviewed 834 articles pertaining to Ménière's Disease between 1951 and 1975. He found that advocates of either medical or surgical treatments claimed success in 60% to 80% of patients. Because there are so many different therapies deemed successful, Torok believed that the placebo effect might be a common factor to all of those treatments.

“Placebo effect is the term applied by medical science to the therapeutical and healing effects of inert medicines and/or ritualistic or faith healing manipulations. [1] [2]. When referring to medicines, placebo is a preparation which is pharmacologically inert but which may have a therapeutical effect based solely on the power of suggestion. It may be administered in any of the ways in which pharmaceutical products are administered.[3]

The mechanism of the placebo effect can actually be measured in the brain. There is a physical response that takes place in response to the positive (or negative) thinking that the patient experiences. An example of this happening is the study where the participants were given a placebo but were told it was a stimulant they were receiving. The patients all had an increase in pulse, blood pressure and reaction speed. When patients were given the same placebo but were told that it was a sleeping pill, they had the opposite reaction: slower pulse, blood pressure and reaction speed. Mechanisms involving neurotransmitters, such as endorphins (raises pain threshold) and dopamine (regulates emotion) can be altered by the placebo effect and directly affects areas of the brain such as the prefrontal cortex (area behind forehead in charge of abstract thinking, decision making, social control, etc.), amygdala (processes emotions), and anterior insula (pain perception, speech production and processing social emotions) just to name a few. Medications take these same pathways when working their way through the body. Taking a “sugar pill” for pain will actually cause you to release endorphins and relieve the pain, sometimes even if the patient is aware the pill they took was a

We’ve all heard the joke before. Visualize being a doctor and lying about treatment for a patient. Kind of scary right? However, let us not forget that this patient has miraculously healed from said treatment. Does that make a difference in the fact stated before? That is exactly what is deliberated in a doctor’s mind when prescribing a placebo to their patient. For a moment imagine being the patient. How would one feel? Possibly ill? In desperate need of something to rid them well again, right? Essentially, being a patient, one will fundamentally place all of their trust into whatever the doctor prescribes without means of concern. Consequently, the patient discovers their treatment has been confirmed to have no effect, but they became better. After taking what the doctor prescribed, the patient more or less expected to ensure healthy. So they did. This remarkable medical therapy evidently validates to people that the “placebo effect” functions as expected; even if patients are unaware they are receiving a so-called ersatz treatment.

People might define a false belief in different ways, but reflecting on my past experiences, I can define a false belief as a view – of something, held by a particular individual or a group of people which originates from the lack of/false information. A misbelief is not always a negative thing or something that needs to be avoided, because I believe that misbeliefs are not intentional. With that said, I than believe that there are in fact, quite a few exceptions to this principle.

he placebo effect has many positives and negatives. Some of the positives are theoretically if the patient believes in the drug it can help alleviate physical or psychological symptoms or even disease, like in Dr. Wright's case. Another positive is being told something will help them can at least put a patient at easy even if it doesn't help cure them. Also it is generally not harmful in studies because it is just a sugar pill, and contains no actual drug, although if the person taking the placebo though it would hurt them then it could have a nocebo type of affect on them. The last positive is that if it can be found to cure people it is very affordable, due to it generally being made of sugar.

Theories are constantly being tested on the effect placebos have over the human mind; research on placebo treatment and the placebo effect has increased exponentially. Researchers have a found a variety of ways to test the effect on people in order to figure out new levels of treatment. If researchers were to figure out that the usage of placebos treats or lowers the pain index in patients with different medical conditions, the standard of technology in medicine would raise to a whole new degree. The placebo effect is when the placebo treatment itself, which is considered an ineffective “dummy-pill”, actually works in effecting the human mind. A placebo is as effective as your mind makes it to be. If a person believes hard enough that something will happen when they consume a certain pill or are told that doing a certain activity will benefit them, it will.

According to expectancy theory, the placebo effect is mediated directly by conscious expectation (Amanzio 2001). This is due to the psychosocial factors that are associated with the context of the treatment such as environmental cues which suggests what the treatment