Nocebo

We all recognize the concept of placebos.  

The placebo effect, is said to occur when positive expectations improve an outcome.

I am not sure it ever occurred to me to think about the mirror concept, nocebos.  

A nocebo effect is said to occur when negative expectations of the patient regarding a treatment cause the treatment to have a more negative effect than it otherwise would have.  For example, when a patient anticipates a side effect of a medication, they can suffer that effect even if the "medication" is actually an inert substance.  The complementary concept, the placebo effect, is said to occur when positive expectations improve an outcome. Both placebo and nocebo effects are presumably psychogenic, but they can induce measurable changes in the body.  One article that reviewed 31 studies on nocebo effects reported a wide range of symptoms that could manifest as nocebo effects including nausea, stomach pains, itching, bloating, depression, sleep problems, loss of appetite, sexual dysfunction and severe hypotension.

Which one might extend to the media hysteria machine, always creating new political, economic, or scientific existential threat to stampede people into illogical or unreflective decisions.  We are living in a nocebo matrix where the mainstream media and academia work hard to create bad expectations about the future when in fact all people living in the world are far better off than at any time in history.