Again, the primary issue for me in this, is not the drugs - but rather the primary philosophical tenet. There are those who believe that everything is an Object, everything is a chemical of one kind or another. To them, there is no such thing as a mind, there is only the brain, composed, of course, of only the objects of chemistry.
However, this study provides direct refutation of this reductionist philosophy. How? What are the elements of Placebo that correspond to the elements of chemistry as illustrated in the Periodic Table?
If we liken the computer to a brain, then the Placebo effect affects your thoughts, the running software. SSRIs target the levels of neurochemicals that are the standard built-in settings for your brain, such as the BIOS settings and the hardware switches on your motherboard.
Many people THINK that the BIOS settings can only be accessed via the BIOS menus at boot. Programmers know that simply by going into the Power Management section of Control Panel, allows you to change the BIOS settings via Windows. This is because the BIOS settings are changed by BIOS functions. The BIOS menus are just an interface to call the desired BIOS functions. The Power Management panel is just another interface for accessing the BIOS functions.
The hardware switches, however, are pure hardware. You have to switch them over physically, to get them to change.
The Placebo effect could only affect those brain settings that are like the BIOS settings. What this shows, is that serotonin levels are like the BIOS settings, and NOT like hardware switches. The SSRIs were like changing them from the BIOS menus. The Placebo effect was like changing them from the software. Both can access the BIOS functions, which include serotonin levels.
There is a difference between the effects of the Placebo effect on higher levels of depression. There might be 2 switches: a BIOS setting for the lower levels of serotonin, and a hardware switch on the higher levels of serotonin, leading to the Placebo effect not being able to access the hardware switch.
Or, the serotonin levels might be a question of setting the voltage levels. The BIOS functions might only have the ability to raise or lower the serotonin levels by a small amount, each time the function is called. But even with such functions, the BIOS menus will still show the range of voltages available, and will still call the function enough times to achieve the desired voltate. The same would then be true of humans. The Placebo effect would call the BIOS function, to raise serotonin levels, and then serotonin levels would raise, enough to get someone in a mild depression out of it, but not enough to get someone with heavy depression completely out of it, and the continued depression might pull the patient back into his former heavy depression. The SSRIs would continue to work, because they would be prescribed at a much higher dosage for very depressed patients, and so, when the normal dosage of SSRI has raised the voltage levels, there is a second level of dosage left, that calls the BIOS function again and consequently raises the BIOS function again, and so on. However, potentially, there would be the same effect, if the doctor told the patient that a single course of the placebo tablets would reduce the depression in most patients, and then prescribed a second or even third course for those who were in heavy depression, as each course would call the BIOS function each time, and so would have the same effects as multiple dosage levels.
Another possibility is that the mildly depressed patients still have some hope that drugs might cure them, and so the Placebo effect can work in them, but the heavily depressed patients believe that not even medical drugs can help them, and the Placebo effect will not work if you believe it won't work, and so in them it doesn't work.
Two of them are Faith and Belief. These mechanisms are Subjective tools, with no manifestation as chemicals or objects, yet they provide the means for healing far more effective than chemical medication. Yet where is the research into how to make Placebo better?
The Placebo effect has been tested most extensively. For instance, patients who were told that a stove was burning hot, would, when they placed their hands on it, develop a burn mark exactly as if the stove was burning hot, even when it was stone cold.
However, the Placebo effect has certain disadvantages. It is subjective to belief, and so is entirely dependent on how much the doctor can get the patient to believe him. It requires time, skill, and a rapport. The manufacturers of the Placebo effect can only make money by training the doctor, and then, they are trained once, for a whole raft of diseases.
SSRIs are much more like a mechanical device. They can be mass-produced. They can be given in a single minute. They make the manufacturers money each time the patient takes them. Plus, they do not rely on the patient believing in them.
So SSRIs are much quicker to administer for doctors, and so save doctors a LOT of time, and they make a lot more money for the manufacturers, and they will work for the patient, irrespective of how much he/she believes in them. So they are potentially more useful for everyone.
