Rumpelstiltskin Effect
A recent review article published in the BJPsych Bulletin looks at an effect that’s long been documented by medical practitioners, but which hasn’t been well documented until relatively recently.
The so-called “Rumpelstiltskin Effect” refers to the tendency of patients to experience relief after receiving a diagnosis.
Even before any treatment (when treatment is available) can be administered, patients may begin to feel a bit better—their symptoms possibly easing, or maybe they experience an improvement in their psychological valence.
The name of this effect is derived from a folktale in which learning the name of a magical tormentor grants the tormentee some degree of power over it.
This same general principle seems to sometimes play out in doctor’s offices, as simply receiving a diagnosis, learning the name of some up-till-that-point nebulous, mysterious tormentor, can help patients relax a little; because maybe now they know what needs to be done to treat their issue, and maybe they have a sense of how to cope with it if treatment isn’t an option.
It’s also possible they just no longer feel like they’re going crazy trying to get the medical world to understand that something’s wrong, especially if no one up till that point has been able to put a name to what’s happening (or perhaps told them it was all in their head).
Previous work has looked at the positive potential of diagnostic labeling and found similar positive effects.
All of which maybe shines a light on why there’s such an uptick in self-diagnoses amongst people who are experiencing some kind of medical or psychological issue, and who use online resources rather than doctors to figure out what’s happening (even though the latter doesn’t offer any possibility of receiving treatment or getting medications).
Simply knowing what’s happening (or feeling like they do) and putting a label on it can be soothing, inducing positive placebo effects which, in turn, can sometimes ease or even reverse real-deal negative psychological and somatic symptoms. This can also validate and empower those who, up till the moment they can label what they’re going through, may have been experiencing something that felt both baffling and entirely beyond their control.