Harnessing Placebo Responses to Improve Health Outcomes

Variations in the psychosocial aspects of the provision of health care treatments can measurably affect the health outcomes resulting from the use of such treatments. These benefits (or harms) in outcomes result from processes beyond the specific physiological mechanisms induced by the treatments. Such phenomena can be most clearly seen when physiological improvements are induced by administering inert placebo medications in the same manner as if they were actual medications. By logic, these physiological improvements should also occur during the provision of actual medications and potentiate the latter's effectiveness. There are likely many manipulations of the patient-clinician interaction that can positively or negatively affect therapeutic outcomes for many conditions. Clinicians should thus be able to make choices in their behavior that optimize any possible increases in drug effectiveness resulting from placebo responses. This commentary makes the assertion that pharmacists are ethically obligated to learn and practice techniques that maximize placebo responses and that it is incumbent upon the Academy to explore and understand such techniques and effectively teach them to students.