Open AccessWhat if a placebo effect explained all the activity of depression treatments?
Author(s) -
Cuijpers Pim,
Cristea Ioana A.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
world psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 15.51
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 2051-5545
pISSN - 1723-8617
DOI - 10.1002/wps.20249
Subject(s) - placebo , pill , medicine , depression (economics) , pharmacotherapy , psychiatry , randomized controlled trial , psychotherapist , alternative medicine , psychology , pharmacology , pathology , economics , macroeconomics
Many randomized trials have shown that when depressed patients receive no active treatment, e.g. they are administered pill placebo, a large part of them improve anyway. This improvement can be partly explained by natural remission or by the patients’ expectations that a treatment will have an effect on their problems (even when they receive pill placebo). The corollary is that many patients remit even when undergoing exotic therapies, such as Argentian tango, swimming with dolphins or horticulture (1–3).