STRESSED? PLACEBOS MAY HELP

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STRESSED? PLACEBOS MAY HELP

    

A team from Michigan State University has found that placebos can help people handle stress—even when they know exactly what they're taking and get the pills by mail. In the study, adults dealing with ongoing stress from the COVID-19 pandemic were split into two groups. One group received placebo pills in the mail, along with straightforward explanations about how placebos work; the other group didn’t take any pills.

Everyone took part in four Zoom meetings with researchers over two weeks. By the end of the study, those who took the so-called “open-label” placebos (meaning they knew the pills were inactive) reported noticeably lower levels of stress, anxiety, and depression compared to those who took nothing. Participants also found the placebo routine easy to follow.

“Chronic stress can really mess with your ability to manage emotions and can snowball into serious mental health problems, so it’s encouraging to see that something so straightforward could actually make a difference,” said Jason Moser, a psychology professor at MSU and co-author of the study, which was published in Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being.

The researchers are particularly excited about the potential to deliver these placebos remotely. “Mailing out honest placebos means we can reach people who might struggle to get help otherwise,” said Darwin Guevarra, another co-author and postdoctoral scholar at UC San Francisco. The hope is that this low-effort, low-cost method could bring real relief to people who don’t have easy access to traditional mental health care.

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