Placebo and cultural responses

Abstract

Background: Features of placebo response in medicine have been forgotten and ignored over the last decade.

Aim: To explore why patients do get better with placebo despite its perceived inertness.

Methods: This lecture reviews the relation between illness perception, psychopharmacology and culture.

Results: Placebo response must be considered in the context of how patients perceive their experience of disease (illness) and through their own cultures, which determine cognitive schema and explanatory model of illness. Most of the placebo response relies on the classical conditioning and expectancy of patients. Moreover, the colour, size, formulation, cost of medications can affect the psychological response to any pharmacological treatment.

Conclusions: Modern psychopharmacology should consider placebo and cultural variations as relevant factors of treatment response.

Keywords: Placebo; culture; ethno-psychopharmacology; placebo response.