Placebo effect may influence depression treatment
‘It cannot be assumed that an antidepressant has lost its effectiveness if a patient relapses while continuing on the medication, because the medication may never have been effective in the first place, according to study findings reported in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.
In the study, the majority of relapses occurred in patients who had never been true responders, Dr. Mark Zimmerman, director of outpatient psychiatry at Rhode Island Hospital, told Reuters Health.
Some patients with major depressive disorder, similar to other medical disorders, respond to placebo, Zimmerman explained. In clinical practice, everyone is given an active drug, so it’s not clear if a patient who responds has improve because of the drug or because of “nonspecific” effects, such as the placebo effect.
The placebo effect is a sort of “power of suggestion” response in which a patient begins to feel better because he thinks he has received treatment (and doesn’t know he has been given a placebo). These responses are usually short-term.’
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