-IBIS-1.5.0-
rx
principles (Mind/Body)
nocebo effect
psychospiritual approaches

definition

Nocebo effect: the opposite of the placebo; the negative effects of a practitioner's opinion.

"Let's say the National Institutes of Health did a study of lung cancer patients that showed a 90% mortality rate with six months. The study gets published in the New England Journal of Medicine; it's now in the doctor's office. and the next time a patient walks in with lung cancer, this is what he tells the patient. Or at the very least it shapes what the doctor believes and what he is thinking as he interacts with the patient. This study influences the collective consciousness of doctors, who now influence the outcome of the disease. We start reinforcing those statistics, and we make them our so-called objective reality, namely a 90% mortality from lung cancer within six months. We create the morbidity and mortality of the disease through the collective nocebo effect. I fear for what we are doing as doctors. Are we creating mortality from AIDS, for example, with the national paranoia, the national fear and panic, about the disease? Are people dying from AIDS, or are they dying from the diagnosis?"

Anything can function as a nocebo, just as anything can function as a placebo. It is the patient's interpretation that alters the significance. With placebo, you give an inert drug and the patient responds because the doctor has told him the drug will work, and a healing response within the patient has been activated. With nocebo, you give a viable drug, but the patient doesn't respond because the doctor has signaled that the drug isn't going to work. If a patient regards any treatment negatively, then the body will be flooded with negative emotions, and the ability to heal is greatly reduced. It is well documented that depressed people not only lower their immune response, but even weaken their DNA's ability to repair itself.
(Chopra, p. 157-8)

see also:
bodymind psychobiology
body reveals: the spirit
compassion and healing
converting a symptom to a signal
healing belief systems
holographic paradigm
mind beyond body
process paradigm
state-dependent learning
quantum healing
the shadow and physical symptoms


footnotes