Clinicians across medicine are familiar with an odd feature of descriptive diagnoses: they can bring patients real relief & provide an explanation, even without offering causes. In a new paper, @alanlevinovitz.bsky.social and I call this the Rumpelstiltskin effect. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
I’ve been dealing with a variety of chronic symptoms that are getting progressively worse. Since I’m overweight everything gets dismissed as due to my weight. At one point a doctor thought I might have CHF. I actually had relief at having a name for it. Turns out that wasn’t it. Still don’t know.
[..] He said I had what he called “major depression” and this was due to an imbalance in my brain serotonin. He said I should take the medicine he prescribed and it would correct that imbalance. Three weeks later I was feeling a lot better. I was really impressed. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Treatment should be with a placebopill. Double impact!
For a condensed version and accessible summary of the article, see our blogpost: www.psychiatrymargins.com/p/the-rumpel...
Interesting Blogpost. Do you talk about unwelcome diagnostic labels as well in the full paper? Also, as you mention, sometimes this is a temporary effect. I wonder how often that's the case.
We don’t talk about unwelcome diagnoses, mainly because we think the effect doesn’t really apply in those situations, but hard to say with certainty unless someone studies it. The effect being temporary does seem like a frequent occurrence anecdotally but again I don’t think anyone has investigated!
Very cool! I wrote a while ago about some related effects, and how they interact with politics. The Rumpelstiltskin effect is a brilliant name, which I wish I'd known at the time! pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22326090/
Terrific name!