The positive power of what we say during treatment

Expectations form one of the important predictors of response to treatment, especially in the case of treatments for pain. A person’s belief or expectation that a treatment will reduce their pain is thought to be part of the response to placebo – and indeed, part of the response to almost any treatment.  Much of the research into expectancies has been carried out in experimental models where healthy people are given a painful stimulus, then provided with some sort of treatment along with a verbal (or written) instruction that is thought to generate a positive belief in the effectiveness of that treatment. The people we see in a clinical setting, however, are in quite a different setting – they experience pain sufficiently disruptive to their sense of well-being that they’ve sought treatment, they may not know what the pain problem is, they may have other health conditions affecting their well-being, and for some, their pain may be chronic or persistent. Do expectations have a clinically-relevant effect on their pain? Luckily for us, a recent meta-analysis published in Pain (Peerdeman, van Laarhoven, Keij, Vase, Rovers, Peters & Evers, 2016) means the hard work of crunching through the published research has been completed for us! And given 15 955 studies were retrieved in the initial pass through the databases, we can be very relieved indeed (although only 30 met the inclusion criteria…). What are expectations? Before I swing into the result...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - Category: Anesthesiology Authors: Tags: Coping strategies Pain Research Science in practice acute pain Chronic pain conditioning expectations mental imagery placebo procedures treatment verbal instruction Source Type: blogs