Open-Label Placebo for the Treatment of Depression

Open label placebo treatment has been tried for irritable bowel syndrome (Kaptchuk et al, 2010), where three weeks of open label placebo proved superior to a wait-listed control group. Another pilot study demonstrated efficacy in treating children suffering from ADHD with open label placebo treatment (Sandler \& Bodfish, 2007). Recent work has shown that placebo openly given can have significant analgesic effects for acute migraines (Kam-Hansen et al, 2014) and for experimentally-induced pain (Schafer at al, 2015). A preliminary attempt to treat depression with open label placebo proved the feasibility of such a study, but was too small and brief for conclusive results (Kelley et al, 2012). We provide here the protocol for a study to assess the effect of open label placebo treatment for depression.