A therapeutic effect is a consequence of a medical treatment of any kind, the results of which are judged to be desirable and beneficial. This is true whether the result was expected, unexpected, or even an unintended consequence of the treatment. An adverse effect, on the other hand, is a harmful and undesired effect.
What constitutes a therapeutic effect versus a side effect is a matter of both the nature of the situation in which a treatment is used and the goals of treatment. There is no inherent difference between therapeutic and undesired side effects; both responses are behavioral/physiologic changes which occur as a response to the treatment strategy or agent. The most common nominal reason for preferring certain effects is avoiding death. However, those changes which are viewed as desirable, given the situation, are called therapeutic; those undesirable for the situation are viewed as harmful.
Read more about Therapeutic Effect: Scope of Treatments, Pharmacology Example, Reducing Complexity
Famous quotes containing the words therapeutic and/or effect:
“As a science of the unconscious it is a therapeutic method, in the grand style, a method overarching the individual case. Call this, if you choose, a poets utopia.”
—Thomas Mann (18751955)
“I have witnessed, and greatly enjoyed, the first act of everything which Wagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result has been the next thing to suicide.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910)