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Open-label placebos reduce test anxiety and improve self-management skills: A randomized-controlled trial

Test anxiety is a condition in which people experience extreme distress and anxiety before and in test situations. It affects up to 40 percent of all students. Conventional treatment includes both medication and psychotherapy, but studies also demonstrated that placebos affect anxiety symptoms. Alth...

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Autores principales: Schaefer, Michael, Denke, Claudia, Harke, Rebecca, Olk, Nina, Erkovan, Merve, Enge, Sören
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6746734/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31527670
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-49466-6
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author Schaefer, Michael
Denke, Claudia
Harke, Rebecca
Olk, Nina
Erkovan, Merve
Enge, Sören
author_facet Schaefer, Michael
Denke, Claudia
Harke, Rebecca
Olk, Nina
Erkovan, Merve
Enge, Sören
author_sort Schaefer, Michael
collection PubMed
description Test anxiety is a condition in which people experience extreme distress and anxiety before and in test situations. It affects up to 40 percent of all students. Conventional treatment includes both medication and psychotherapy, but studies also demonstrated that placebos affect anxiety symptoms. Although in the traditional understanding placebos need to be administered in a concealed way, intriguing new studies report that open-label placebos can be effective. Since prescription of fake pills involves ethical problems, open-label placebos may provide important new treatment possibilities. Here we report results of a pilot study examining whether open-label placebos may reduce test anxiety and improve self-management skills. 58 students participated in a two-group randomized controlled trial. Two weeks before an exam at the university participants received open-label placebos or no pills (control group). Participant – provider relationship and amount of contact time was held similar for all groups. After two weeks we found that test anxiety and self-management abilities (skills and resources) of the open-label placebo group were more improved than in the control group. Thus, our results seems to indicate that open-label placebos may reduce test anxiety and enhance self-management skills in students.
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spelling pubmed-67467342019-09-27 Open-label placebos reduce test anxiety and improve self-management skills: A randomized-controlled trial Schaefer, Michael Denke, Claudia Harke, Rebecca Olk, Nina Erkovan, Merve Enge, Sören Sci Rep Article Test anxiety is a condition in which people experience extreme distress and anxiety before and in test situations. It affects up to 40 percent of all students. Conventional treatment includes both medication and psychotherapy, but studies also demonstrated that placebos affect anxiety symptoms. Although in the traditional understanding placebos need to be administered in a concealed way, intriguing new studies report that open-label placebos can be effective. Since prescription of fake pills involves ethical problems, open-label placebos may provide important new treatment possibilities. Here we report results of a pilot study examining whether open-label placebos may reduce test anxiety and improve self-management skills. 58 students participated in a two-group randomized controlled trial. Two weeks before an exam at the university participants received open-label placebos or no pills (control group). Participant – provider relationship and amount of contact time was held similar for all groups. After two weeks we found that test anxiety and self-management abilities (skills and resources) of the open-label placebo group were more improved than in the control group. Thus, our results seems to indicate that open-label placebos may reduce test anxiety and enhance self-management skills in students. Nature Publishing Group UK 2019-09-16 /pmc/articles/PMC6746734/ /pubmed/31527670 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-49466-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Schaefer, Michael
Denke, Claudia
Harke, Rebecca
Olk, Nina
Erkovan, Merve
Enge, Sören
Open-label placebos reduce test anxiety and improve self-management skills: A randomized-controlled trial
title Open-label placebos reduce test anxiety and improve self-management skills: A randomized-controlled trial
title_full Open-label placebos reduce test anxiety and improve self-management skills: A randomized-controlled trial
title_fullStr Open-label placebos reduce test anxiety and improve self-management skills: A randomized-controlled trial
title_full_unstemmed Open-label placebos reduce test anxiety and improve self-management skills: A randomized-controlled trial
title_short Open-label placebos reduce test anxiety and improve self-management skills: A randomized-controlled trial
title_sort open-label placebos reduce test anxiety and improve self-management skills: a randomized-controlled trial
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6746734/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31527670
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-49466-6
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