In February 2012, PiPS Director Ted Kaptchuk and PiPS Senior Faculty Arthur Barsky presented at Talks@Twelve, a quarterly lecture given to the Harvard Medical School community. We just received the a link to the video filmed by the Harvard Medical School Communications Office. To watch, click here.
Photo by Angela Alberti
In March 2012, PiPS Associate Director Irving Kirsch, presented a plenary address at the 2012 Integrative Medicine & Health Congress in Portland, OR. The talk, “Placebo Therapy as an Ethical Alternative,” outlines Dr. Kirsch’s research of the placebo effect in depression and his suggestions for how these findings might transform health care. For a video of the lecture and slides, click here.
Excerpt: “Oh, it was awful! You couldn’t leave the house. You were sick all the time,” said Linda Buonanno, who has been plagued by irritable bowel syndrome for 18 years. “Intestinal pains, cramps, bloating, diarrhea, all that. And it’s very difficult.”
From pills to drastic diet changes, she’s tried it all, desperate for relief. But nothing worked until she signed up for a new Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center study.
“They said it’s the placebo effect. It’s mind over matter,” said Buonanno.
To watch the full story, click here.
On May 17, 2012 Helen Riess, MD, Director of the Empathy and Relational Sciences Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, presented a lecture as part of the Placebo Studies Seminar Series.
Ted Kaptchuk, Director of the Program in Placebo Studies & the Therapeutic Encounter at BIDMC, talks about the role of the placebo to health and describes the surprising results of a recent study which found that patients with irritable bowel syndrome felt better after receiving placebo treatments – even though they knew they were getting sugar pills.
“Putting the Placebo Effect to Work: Rather than dismiss it, we should try to understand the placebo effect and harness it when we can”
The front-cover story of the April 2012 edition of the Harvard Health Letter reviews recent research into the placebo effect, including several studies performed by the PiPS team. Click here to read the article.
PiPS Associate Director Irving Kirsch is interviewed in today’s Boston Globe. Read the full article here.
PiPS Associate Director Irving Kirsch discusses the placebo effect with Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes this past Sunday.
Click here for the video, transcript and the “60 Minutes Overtime” show.
