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The impact of treatment and other clinical and community health interventions: A ‘does it work?’ evaluation
Published in Milos Jenicek, Foundations of Evidence-Based Medicine, 2019
The nocebo effect may play an important social and cultural role. Such is the case, for example, in voodoo death,74 ‘tapu’ or ‘taboo’ death among New Zealand Maoris,75 sociogenic (psychogenic, mass-produced) illness (hysteria) or unexplained responses to exposures to unpleasant sensations such as odors or mild irritants in environmental health and occupational medicine. The nocebo effect is confirmed in these cases by an often complex and extended exclusion of known specific harms. Victims of wars, refugees or dispossessed or otherwise socially alienated persons may become subjects of specific or nonspecific expectations and ensuing nocebo consequences. The nocebo effect may be a clinical problem at the bedside and a public health problem in a community setting.
Chapter 5 Mind-bending pain
Published in Lawrence Goldie, Jane Desmarais, Psychotherapy and the Treatment of Cancer Patients, 2013
Lawrence Goldie, Jane Desmarais
This was described by Walter B. Cannon in his article on ‘Voodoo Death’, published in 1957.3 The Aboriginal Witch Doctor would point a bone at his victim, a person doomed to die. After he ‘bones’ his victim in this way, the rest of the tribe perform a ritual act of burial in front of him, indicating that they have no hope for him now. In their minds, he is already dead, and he is eliminated as a person with any hope. The Aboriginal victim, as a consequence, stops eating and drinking and becomes mute as he waits for death. He stops talking (just like the ‘good patient’), and because the others withdraw love and hope, he dies. The Witch Doctor and the tribe see his death as a consequence of the ritual, but it is their withdrawal of compassion that kills him.
Standards of Care: A Need for Critical Skills
Published in John K. Crellin, Fernando Ania, Professionalism and Ethics in Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2012
John K. Crellin, Fernando Ania
Complementary/alternative medicine is almost certainly no different from conventional medicine with regard to placebo responses; however, efforts to identify the placebo element in its treatments are of special importance because critics dismiss entire treatments as “merely placebo.” Unfortunately there are few significant studies along the line of “Is evidence for homeopathy reproducible?” by D. Reilly and colleagues. They concluded that “homeopathy does more than placebo” in the treatment of hayfever and asthma.68 A professional responsibility in considering such matters is to recognize patients’ beliefs and the respect they demand. This is especially significant when one considers that inert or active treatments can not only produce placebo effects, but also negative outcomes (nocebo actions). The latter is a possibility whenever a patient expects a treatment to fail, has knowledge of side effects of a medication for which a placebo is substituted, or generally anticipates a negative outcome (possibly fostered by a practitioner's attitudes). Hopelessness, for example, has been associated with increasing the incidence and mortality in ischemic heart disease. This overall negative response (of which voodoo death is often given as an example) is sometimes contrasted with negative “side effects” (e.g., a new problem such as a skin rash) following the administration of a placebo.69 Some observers suggest that nocebo responses are less likely in complementary/alternative than conventional care, but vigilance is always needed, especially when a patient arrives as a “last resort” with high hopes because everything else has failed.
Can acute stress be fatal? A systematic cross-disciplinary review
Published in Stress, 2019
Solveig Baltzer Nielsen, Sharleny Stanislaus, Kari Saunamäki, Carsten Grøndahl, Jytte Banner, Martin Balslev Jørgensen
The notion that one can get scared to death is widespread in popular culture and has probably been a common understanding for centuries, yet from a scientific point of view this understanding is not widely accepted. In 1942, Walter Cannon tried to comprehend what by anthropologists was described as voodoo death in different indigenous tribes across the globe. In societies where magic was a part of the belief system and people were convinced that a spell could be deadly, people did indeed die after such spells were cast upon them. In some cases this was described as a swift death after a short period of extreme agitation. Cannon theorized that the mental distress caused by the firm belief that death was coming made the sympathetic-adrenal system overreact to such a degree that the blood pressure fell and the victim would consequently die (Cannon, 1942).