Can people really die of psychosomatic causes?

I've just come across this article. Is it bullshit?

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-human-beast/201209/voodoo-death-i?amp

 

Why is there no laughing-with-tears emoticon?

So magical thinking is actually true, and a young boy who dies a short time after eating a wild animal does so because it was cursed.

 

He died because he believed it was cursed, and the people around him reinforced that belief.

Off topic, but at the bottom of that article were several links to other recent articles, including a rather good one on gaslighting.

 

for a start, I would have thought that not drinking for24-48hrs in a very hot country like an African one, where you are sweating profusely, can kill you quite easily & quickly, particularly if you were not well hydrated prior to refusing water. It was their behaviour that killed them not their beliefs.

For every story of a person who believed/focussed on living/dying at a certain time (after anniversaries/Christmas etc) & did, there is another of someone who believed they would.... and didn't or vice versa. IT's just that the ones that appear to suggest beliefs (or voodoo or whatever) influenced things are much more memorable.
Beliefs affect behaviour & mood, that's it. And cherry picking cases in order to appear to prove a 'post hoc ergo propter hoc' conclusion is dangerous.

This notion that your beliefs can kill you or keep alive is poisonous. It's destructive for those who are on the negative end of health problems, & it makes those who are simply lucky feel smug & take credit for their own good fortune. It's what persecutes cancer patients with blame for their own deaths if they don't stay positive & 'believe'.

Of course what you believe is going to influence your behaviour & that of those around you, which may well influence your outcomes, but plenty of people live another day/week/mnths etc when they & everyone around them believed they were going to die... & vice versa.

People who believe in the power of belief/faith/magic etc, are drawn to the cases which appear to prove it... it's coincidences cherry picked to appear to prove what they believe.

In addition this article makes the classic mistake, as seems so prevalent, of thinking that the placebo effect actually makes objective changes in the body. And if anyone can show me a study where objective outcome measures are changed by the placebo control... I'd welcome that & change my thinking. Until then, AFAIC, you & everyone around you can believe you're going to die... but that alone wont kill you.

 

You missed my point.

My point was that the boy more likely died because the bird was toxic, or something else he ate was toxic, or he had a congenital heart condition or a burst aneurysm in his brain - any one of those possibilities is more likely the cause of the boy's death, than him believing the bird was cursed. Otherwise, turning the door handle 15 times each time would save us all from death, and jumping off skyscrapers would help us to fly, and CBT would cure ME.

 

source: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/325174.php
quality of source: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/medical-news-today/

 

If the hen wasn't cursed then how else do you explain the shockingly terrible day it was having?

 

General rule: If it’s published in Psychobullst Today, it’s psychobullsht. Go over their back issues, every fad and many frauds are featured in glowing terms.

 

Oh wow, I did not have voodoo on my pseudoscience bingo card.

Yeah, humours are definitely going to make a comeback.

 

The real secret is ignoring the millions of people who were told the same thing and didn't coincidentally die. Knowing the popularity of voodoo and shamanism around the world, this is easily in the tens or hundreds of millions.

If you discount all the prophecies that have never realized, all the prophecies have been realized. Also the trick to a good rain dancing is to have scouts going around warning you that large dark clouds are coming your way. Magic! Science!

Coincidentally, I am now going to promote my tiger-repelling rocks business in pop psychology magazines, this is clearly prime territory for a market of suckers.

 

Beware claims based on anecdotes. Anecdotes can be spot on, completely right, but the issue here is you have no way of being sure unless you know all the details in question. So when someone pushing pseudoscience asks around, and gets a hundreds positive reviews or anecdotes, you don't get to see the thousands they could not use, or the thousands who never responded.

Its also about stories. If you tell a good story, who cares about science?

My general model for quack therapies, for example, is they put the therapy out there for thousands to try. A hundred seem to improve as a result, even if its just by chance. Then they recruit five to promote the therapy, and cite all these endorsements.

There is a reason why we have to rely on science. There is also a trap.

In the case of an ME patient, we have no diagnostic test and no reliable treatments. Therefore there is no real diagnosis, and no treatments, right? This is falling into a logical trap. While it can be said there is no reliable diagnosis (ignoring for now recent advances and repeat CPET) and no reliable treatment, its not that we cannot be diagnosed, or that there are no treatments. Its that we cannot scientifically assert they are reliable ... yet. Yet if I were an individual who improved after some treatment, I would still be pleased. I just could not assert its a treatment that works for all ME patients.

There is a whole issue here I have not discussed recently, to do with command and control diseases. I hope I get around to writing it soon.

 

@Sarah94
Here's the way I see it.

You can only die of a physiological cause. That is the only way to die.

Where things get fudged is when for example someone has a weak heart and they get a really terrifying fright. I think in this case you can be scared to death but the cause of death is your heart. It's not psychosomatic. Thoughts don't kill. Our reaction to our environment can. Again, not psychosomatic.

 

"My grandad died of a broken heart after my gran died"

"Ah that so sad"

"Ye for the last three years of his life he just gave up".

"How old was he when he died"

"102".

 

I think it’s called gut biome nowadays ..black bile is soooo passé we really have made advances from obsessing about piss poo blood and phlegm.

 

It's a nuisance to respond to things like this because the author doesn't know what he's trying to say. I ultimately think that the author fails to make any point.

-There seems to be some underlying suggestion that one can just die from losing the will to live or being so convinced through some superstitious belief that they are going to die that they do. This death has no physical cause, as no causal pathology is found. (Probably this is the idea that psychosomatic enthusiasts are trying to lead people to - the mind can be the cause of illness even if nothing is wrong with the body.) This is dualistic drivel that cannot be taken seriously by anybody who takes scientific inquiry seriously. Everything is physical.

-On the other hand is the idea that superstitious reactions to otherwise mundane events manifest as physiological states so extreme that an individual who is generally healthy dies as more or less a direct result of the extreme physiological state. I don't doubt that some deaths have occurred this way (key phrase being 'more or less'). But I share the concerns stated above that: these cases are probably exceptional; cases mentioned are anecdotal and without autopsy or other relevant investigation; there is probably some predisposing physical attribute; behavior patterns manifesting as part of the superstitious reaction may seriously endanger the individual.

-Of course 'psychosomatic death' exists: Any sort of suicide - whether from suffering or from deeply held conviction (suicide cult, seppuku, terror attack). Deaths from substance abuse - acute overdose, long-term deterioration, or secondary disease. Deaths ultimately resulting from compulsive engagement in risky behaviors. Chronic diseases from sedentary lifestyle and poor diet. The list goes on. Ultimately, when anybody dies you can theoretically trace their behaviors up to the point of death, and find some way that they could have, at least 'statistically', increased their lifespan; so the term becomes meaningless.

I actually think terms like like 'deaths of despair' or 'voodoo death' are much more useful as they refer to some sort of particular pattern that can probably be studied usefully. 'Psychosomatic death' doesn't really mean anything, I think it's just trying to sell some sort of dualistic perspective that makes the mind the cause of illness consistent with the BPS garbage we usually deal with.