New Delhi, Sep 13 Social media may be driving negative opinion on contraceptive pills, leading to women discontinuing birth control drugs within two years of starting them, according to a study.
Researchers at the University of Sheffield identified a “nocebo effect” in relation to the contraceptive pill, where psychological factors such as negative expectations or anxiety about using a medicine drives a physical response in the body when the medicine is taken.
Nocebo responses to the oral contraceptive pill are real and can include feelings of depression, anxiety, and fatigue. The nocebo effect is the “evil twin” to the placebo effect, where people get a positive boost from taking a dummy tablet or pill.
The team highlighted that many women switch to alternative but less effective forms of contraception. In many cases, side effects were central to their decision to discontinue using oral contraception.
“The contraceptive pill gets a lot of negative attention, particularly on social media, and we were interested in how these negative views could be influencing the way women are experiencing oral contraception,” said Dr Rebecca Webster, from the University of Sheffield’s School of Psychology.
“The side effects are very real, but could some of them have a psychological component? If they do, that means we could develop interventions to help people deal with them,” she added.
In the paper, reported in the journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, the team recruited 275 women aged between 18 and 45 to the study. All had been taking the pill at some point over the previous 18 months. They were asked to take part in an online survey.
Statistical analysis revealed four psychological factors that were associated with the likelihood that the women experienced negative side effects. This includes a negative expectation from the outset that the medicine would be harmful; low confidence in the way medicines are developed; a belief that medicines are overused and harmful; and a belief that they are sensitive to medicines.
Nearly every woman in the study (97 per cent) reported at least one side effect. Over the 18-month study period, 149 women (54.2 per cent) continued with the oral contraception. A total of 126 women (45.8 per cent) discontinued using the pill, with 42 of them switching to an alternative form of contraception.
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