{"id":2656,"date":"2013-05-30T13:53:49","date_gmt":"2013-05-30T19:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/minesblog.wordpress.com\/?p=2656"},"modified":"2013-05-30T13:53:49","modified_gmt":"2013-05-30T19:53:49","slug":"health-insite-placebo-by-any-other-name-is-just-as-effective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minesandassociates.com\/health-insite-placebo-by-any-other-name-is-just-as-effective\/","title":{"rendered":"Health inSite: Placebo, by any other name, is just as effective?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

The Placebo App<\/p><\/div>\n

A review of a year and a half of\u00a0Health inSite<\/a>\u00a0research and how I think one group is probably more on target than some might think.<\/p>\n

I’m going to start out by laying out a couple of concepts for review.<\/p>\n

Placebos and psychology<\/h2>\n

A placebo\u00a0is defined<\/a>\u00a0as \u201ca simulated or otherwise medically ineffectual treatment for a disease or other medical condition intended to deceive the recipient.\u201d\u00a0 This causes what is called the placebo effect.\u00a0 A patient is said to have experienced a placebo effect when the intended deception manifests experienced results.\u00a0 While the research indicates that there is a small range of people that are susceptible to the effect, that range hovers at around 30% of the population.<\/p>\n

Rationality<\/h3>\n

One might ask, \u201cHow is it possible that the effects of a non-drug could be experienced as having the results of an actual drug that has the intended, or actual, impact on a patient?\u201d\u00a0 This is explained as the product of self-fulfilling prophesy, or a form of\u00a0expectation bias<\/a>.\u00a0 If you recall the previous posting on\u00a0Thinking Fast and Slow<\/a>, one of the difficulties we face as human beings is both our difficulty in matching up experience and memory, as well as overcoming biases that tint our understanding of rational data.\u00a0 In a word, we are not always rational beings and sometimes our understanding of an experience or idea is subject to our memory and cognitive constructs that allow us to think fast. \u00a0We respond the way that our mind has told our body it expected to experience the event. \u00a0The concept, “Where your mind goes, the energy goes,” has been mentioned extensively by my colleague Dr. Mines in his series on\u00a0Psychology of Performance<\/a>, beginning with\u00a0his first posting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hysteria (or mass psychogenic illness)<\/h2>\n

If you happened to miss the events in Le Roy, NY, where 18 people experienced Tourette\u2019s-like symptoms for an extended period of time, there were many that identified the cause of the experience of these individuals as mass psychogenic illness.\u00a0 Mass psychogenic illness has been largely attributed to situations in which individuals are experiencing similar physical effects (tics, for example) without any clear physical reasons (e.g., environmental toxins, viral or biological triggers, etc.).\u00a0 Historically, this has been referred to as mass hysteria.\u00a0 The complexity of the condition has led many to write it off, but the core assumptions of mass psychogenic illness are sound given what we know about\u00a0social influence<\/a>.\u00a0 Oftentimes in mass psychogenic illness, an index case is discovered in which someone\u2019s\u00a0conversion disorder<\/a>\u00a0acts as a catalyst to the development and spread of the illness through the network.<\/p>\n

Assuming that this is the way in which mass psychogenic illness works, index cases could be used to induce behavior change in a network towards a positive outcome. In this way, it is not mass psychogenic illness, but mass psychogenic\u00a0salutogenesis<\/a>\u00a0(widespread generation of health through the influence of the mind over the body within the social structure of a network).<\/p>\n

CBT and treatment adherence<\/h2>\n

Critical to adherence to any health maintenance or treatment protocol plan is the ritualizing of new behavior.\u00a0 In the chemical dependency field, we’ve known this for a long time.\u00a0 By creating new routines that positively impact our behavior; we are able to more easily overcome the many triggers that previously caused our substance use.<\/p>\n

Triggers are defined in the substance abuse field as events, emotions, or thoughts that trigger the addiction response.\u00a0 They are a major focus in many treatment protocols and are especially important for recognition in the cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) model.\u00a0 The goal in CBT is to identify why it is that we respond to thoughts, emotions, and events and then to develop, for ourselves with the help of a therapist, ways to counter the effect of those triggers.\u00a0 In this way, it\u2019s not the abolition or avoidance of triggers so much as a rational understanding of the trigger and building tools to overcome that trigger\u2019s effect on the coached patient\/client.<\/p>\n

Network theory, social comparison, and braggadocian behavior<\/h2>\n

If you’ve read all of the links to other blog postings in the\u00a0Health inSite<\/a>\u00a0category, but missed the\u00a0posting on braggadocian behavior<\/a>, the concept is very simply that social media has enabled us to engage in bragging around the things that we are doing and that this activity can influence the way that others perceive us \u2013 and we do this to intentionally accomplish that change in perception.\u00a0 This gives us the ability to influence the way that others behave as they engage in responses which may include trying to match our behavior (wittingly or unwittingly) \u00a0or rejection of our behavior as a method of coping with one\u2019s own deficiency in the category of behavior being expressed.\u00a0 This has a powerful impact on the social network in which agents operate as they can directly and indirectly influence the behaviors of individuals that are proximally or distally connected to them.<\/p>\n

In their book\u00a0Connected<\/i><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>Christakis and Fowler explore the significant effects that our social network has on our health and health behaviors. \u00a0Social networks, of course, are not just websites like Facebook or Twitter, but all forms of interaction that we have with various people in our lives, including our family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, and even the people at the grocery store. \u00a0The power of individuals to have an effect across a network based on their location within the network is a clear and well-documented reality.<\/p>\n

Suspension of disbelief<\/h2>\n

As I mentioned in an earlier blog posting on\u00a0the fourth and fifth wall<\/a>, suspension of disbelief is critical to the effectiveness of theater.\u00a0 Without the audience allowing suspension of disbelief, a presentation falls flat in its ability to engage the audience emotionally.\u00a0 Think back to a PowerPoint presentation that was particularly awful because the speaker failed to actively paint a picture that the audience could connect with.\u00a0 Similarly, engagement strategies are starting to use these concepts to create thick tapestries of story that immerse the audience in the story-line, and even sometimes ask them to co-create the story, as in the case of\u00a0the Lizzie Bennet Diaries<\/em><\/a>\u2019<\/a>\u00a0spin-off series,\u00a0Welcome to Sanditon<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

New technology<\/h2>\n

Recently,\u00a0an IndieGoGo campaign<\/a>\u00a0was started for a new project that would create\u00a0a placebo app<\/a>.\u00a0 You might think to yourself, \u201cHow the heck could a placebo app affect someone\u2019s health?\u201d\u00a0 The app, which leverages the power of mirror neuron activity and the placebo effect by creating positive thought-feelings in the brain, could actually override the systems in the brain that cause us to act irrationally in terms of triggers and cognitive biases by leveraging suspension of disbelief.\u00a0 Further, the app allows individuals to interact with their social network around their use of the placebo app, creating a unique opportunity for mass psychogenic salutogenesis.\u00a0 Now all we need are some index cases to start the process toward a tipping point.<\/p>\n

It will be interesting to see the resulting data from this project as we would expect that there is a real opportunity for this to be leveraged to significant effect, not only for those directly accessing the placebo app, but also those that end up interacting with those users.\u00a0 But the rest of the story is still to come.<\/p>\n

Whew, that was quite a round-up of research, huh? \u00a0Comment or send questions!<\/p>\n

For more\u2026<\/h2>\n

…check out a G+ Hangout from HuffPost on placebos and their effect.<\/a><\/p>\n

Ryan Lucas
\nSupervisor, Marketing
\nTo stay ahead on topics related to this, follow me on Twitter\u00a0@dz45tr<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A review of a year and a half of Health inSite research and how I think one group is probably more on target than some might think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[203,234,239,263,291,292,307,319,395,457,480,525,581,583,612,647,672,711,726,787,824,869,883,905,981,1010,1038],"yoast_head":"\nHealth inSite: Placebo, by any other name, is just as effective? - MINES and Associates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/minesandassociates.com\/health-insite-placebo-by-any-other-name-is-just-as-effective\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Health inSite: Placebo, by any other name, is just as effective? 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