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The nocebo effect is the phenonemon that a patient who believes a treatment will cause harm, will actually experience adverse effects.
The nocebo effect is distinguished from older concepts such as sociogenic illness and psychosomatic illness, which are broader terms where a known or unknown cause with cultural or psychological factors is involved. Distinguishing between these effects can be a difficult problem for medical semiotics, or the study of how to interpret the patient's description of their ailments.
The nocebo effect is the reverse of the well-known placebo effect.
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