Placebos

The last post, regarding experimental design and placebo effects, got me thinking about all the "cures" that have been superseded throughout medical and psychiatric history with newer and presumably "better" cures. I recall reading of instances in which schizophrenia was "cured" through psychotherapy or re-parenting or...

Of course, schizophrenia results from a genetic predisposition. It is a physical condition, not a psychological illness. Still, there are reports of people recovering from schizophrenia. One of the few longitudinal studies that spanned over 50 years (my recollection is not perfect here) showed that almost 30% of accurately-diagnosed schizophrenics were eventually no longer schizophrenic. The concordance rate of schizophrenia between identical twins is around 90%, and that's with identical genes. So there is (or are) additional factors that enable the gene to express or to stop expressing, and, of course, we don't know what they are.

Setting aside, for the moment, the issue of how genes get activated or inactivated, people throughout the centuries have reported themselves (or been reported by others) as "cured" of a variety of illnesses and disorders that we KNOW were not treated effectively. "Bleeding" people as a medical technique had many adherents for centuries, and there were many people who believed they had been successfully treated in this manner.

The fact is that we do not know, even remotely, how the body cures itself from otherwise major or deadly diseases. We read about someone recovering from a 100% fatal cancer and living for many years, but we have no idea what the mechanism for this might be. The human body has mechanisms and modes of operation we can't consciously call upon. "Hysterical strength", in which someone under the right kind of circumstances can exert forces normally totally out of our range of function, has been known for a long time.

The "placebo effect" includes our ability to function in these extraordinary ways, and it is apparently fueled by belief or conviction, even mistaken beliefs and erroneous convictions.