Nocebo - Wikipedia
"it's said to occur when a patient's negative expectations for a treatment cause the treatment to have a worse effect than it otherwise would have For example, when a patient anticipates a side effect of a medication, they can experience that effect even if the "medication" is actually an inert substance. The nocebo effect is also said to occur in someone who falls ill owing to the erroneous belief that they were exposed to a physical phenomenon they believe is harmful"
Certain anthropologists, such as Robert Hahn and Arthur Kleinman, have extended the placebo/nocebo distinction into this realm to allow a distinction to be made between rituals, such as faith healing, performed to heal, cure, or bring benefit (placebo rituals) and others, such as "pointing the bone", performed to kill, injure or bring harm (nocebo rituals). As the meaning of the two interrelated and opposing terms has extended, we now find anthropologists speaking, in various contexts, of nocebo or placebo (harmful or helpful) rituals:
- that might entail nocebo or placebo (unpleasant or pleasant) procedures;
- about which subjects might have nocebo or placebo (harmful or beneficial) beliefs;
- that are delivered by operators that might have nocebo or placebo (pathogenic, disease-generating or salutogenic, health-promoting) expectations;
- that are delivered to subjects that might have nocebo or placebo (negative, fearful, despairing or positive, hopeful, confident) expectations about the ritual;
- that are delivered by operators who might have nocebo or placebo (malevolent or benevolent) intentions, in the hope that the rituals will generate nocebo or placebo (lethal, injurious, harmful or restorative, curative, healthy) outcomes; and, that all of this depends upon the operator's overall beliefs in the nocebo ritual's harmful nature or the placebo ritual's beneficial nature.
