The nocebo effect : overdiagnosis and its costs / Stewart Justman.

"The Nocebo Effect documents the transformation of normal conditions into medical problems and brings out the risks that flow from this inflationary practice. One notable risk is that people labeled as sick may find themselves living up to their label through the alchemy of the nocebo effect. The lingering effect of revoked diagnoses, the over-detection of lumps through breast self-examination, the occurrence in placebo groups of adverse events listed in consent forms, and the persistence of labeled as opposed to unlabeled symptoms--all illustrate the kind of signal distortion likely in a climate of overdiagnosis. As normal conditions are branded as medical issues, they acquire powerful, suggestive labels that readily come to life in our minds and bodies. This unique study considers the effects of diagnostic inflation on the diagnosed"-- Provided by publisher.

"The Nocebo Effect documents the transformation of normal problems into medical ones and brings out the risks of this inflationary practice. One notable risk is that people labeled as sick may find themselves living up to their label through the alchemy of the nocebo effect"-- Provided by publisher.

New York : Palgrave Macmillan, [2015]

xi, 272 pages ; 23 cm

First edition: August 2015.

Preamble: Indefinite Ailments and Inflammatory Messages -- 1. DSM and the Shaping of Depression -- 2. The Ills of Health -- 3. Searching for Signs -- Interlude: Medicalization and Magnetism -- 4. Overdiagnosis and its Harms -- 5. Name Games -- 6. Beware What You Look For: Two Cases of Medical Activism -- 7. The Folly of Systems: The Satiric Tradition and Mental Disorders -- 8. The Malady of Awareness -- Epilogue: Return to Sources.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 215-267) and index.