ReviewBJPsych bulletin2025
The Rumpelstiltskin effect: therapeutic repercussions of clinical diagnosis.
Review in BJPsych bulletin, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Neurodegenerative mortality among National Football League Players.EClinicalMedicine · 2026Article
- The DSM needs more than revision: five blind spots and a case for dialogical redesign.Psychological medicine · 2026Article
- Editorial Perspective: How spreading mental health information can be (un-) helpful - a dynamic systems approach.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2026Article
- RE: The Rumpelstiltskin effect: therapeutic repercussions of clinical diagnosis.BJPsych bulletin · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Clinicians across medical disciplines are intimately familiar with an unusual feature of descriptive diagnoses. The diagnostic terms, despite their non-aetiological nature, seem to offer an explanatory lens to many patients, at times with profound effects. These experiences highlight a striking, neglected and unchristened medical phenomenon: the therapeutic effect of a clinical diagnosis, independent of any other intervention, where clinical diagnosis refers to situating the person's experiences into a clinical category by either a clinician or the patient. We call this the Rumpelstiltskin effect. This article describes this phenomenon and highlights its importance as a topic of empirical investigation.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.