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Cultural Variations in the Placebo Effect: Ulcers, Anxiety, and Blood Pressure
Author(s) -
Moerman Daniel E.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
medical anthropology quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.855
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1548-1387
pISSN - 0745-5194
DOI - 10.1525/maq.2000.14.1.51
Subject(s) - placebo , anxiety , blood pressure , psychology , clinical psychology , medicine , psychiatry , alternative medicine , pathology
An analysis of the control groups in double‐blind trials of medicines demonstrates broad variation—from 0 to 100 percent—in placebo effectiveness rates for the same treatment for the same condition. In two cases considered here, drug healing rates covary with placebo healing rates; placebo healing is the ultimate and inescapable "complementary medicine. " Several factors can account for the dramatic variation in placebo healing rates, including cultural ones. But because variation differs by illness, large placebo effects for one condition do not necessarily anticipate large placebo effects for other conditions as well. Deeper understanding of the intimate relationship between cultural and biological processes will require close ethnographic scrutiny of the meaningfulness of medical treatment in different societies, [placebo effect, ulcer disease, anxiety, hypertension, cross‐cultural variation]