Social media driving negative opinion on contraceptive pills among women: Study

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 studyResearchers at the University of Sheffield identified a ldquonocebo effectrdquo 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 takenNocebo responses to the oral contraceptive pill are real and can include feelings of depression anxiety and fatigue The nocebo effect is the ldquoevil twinrdquo to the placebo effect where people get a positive boost from taking a dummy tablet or pillThe 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 contraceptionldquoThe 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 contraceptionrdquo said Dr Rebecca Webster from the University of Sheffieldrsquos School of PsychologyldquoThe 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 themrdquo she addedIn 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 surveyStatistical 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 medicinesNearly every woman in the study 97 per cent reported at least one side effect Over the 18month study period 149 women 542 per cent continued with the oral contraception A total of 126 women 458 per cent discontinued using the pill with 42 of them switching to an alternative form of contraceptionThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever