Another Thought on Placebo

In my previous posts on the question of psych med trials, I should have mentioned the following observations about placebo. In one of the recent studies that I'll post about today, patients taking placebo had a 27 percent response rate (symptom remission of some sort). What's more, in many of the efficacy trials for anti-depressants in the 1990s, it was established that patients taking placebo had a very robust resposne rate to placebo. In some cases, the placebo response rate was on the same order as the response rate to the anti-depressants. Keep in mind these were short-term efficacy trials and after whatever psychological boost ("We're giving you this med to make you feel better" that's an implicit promise when they hand a research subject placebo) wears off, you can be sure the placebo patients would crash and burn.