Winfried Rief

Winfried Rief
Residence	Germany
Nationality	German
Citizenship	German
Known for	Placebo and nocebo mechanisms in medical interventions. Chronic pain with mental and somatic factors.
Awards	Distinguished International Affiliate, APA Division Health Psychology (2014), Distinguished Scientist Award from the International Society of Behavioral Medicine (2014)
Scientific career
Fields	Psychology
Institutions	University of Marburg

Winfried Rief (born May 12, 1959) is a German psychologist. Since 2000 he has been Professor of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy at the University of Marburg. He established the University Outpatient Clinic for Psychotherapy (Psychotherapie-Ambulanz Marburg, PAM), the Institute for Psychotherapy Training Marburg (IPAM) and heads the Department for Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy.

Biography

Rief studied psychology at the University of Trier (1979-1984). Then he worked at the research division of the psychiatric hospital Reichenau at the University of Konstanz, where he received his Ph.D in 1987. The title of the thesis was "Visual Information Processing in Schizophrenics". He completed his habilitation in 1994 at the University of Salzburg (title: "Somatoform disorders and hypochondria"). As a clinician, he worked at the Rottweil Psychiatric Hospital (1986-1987) and at the Roseneck Medical-Psychosomatic Hospital (Prien am Chiemsee; affiliated with the L.M. University of Munich), where he became a senior psychologist in 1989. Rief accepted a professorship in clinical psychology and psychotherapy at the University of Marburg in 2000.

In the following years, he was a visiting professor at the Harvard Medical School in Boston (2004-2005), the University of California in San Diego (2009/2010), and the University of Auckland in New Zealand (2002). Rief is spokesman of the Commission "Psychology and Psychotherapy Training" of the German Society for Psychology (DGPs) and advocates, among other things, a revision of the Psychotherapists Act, which was finally approved by the German Bundestag in 2019. He was also President of the German Society of Behavioural Medicine for several years (2001-2005). He was also nominated as a member of the expert commission of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and World Health Organization (WHO) "Somatic Presentations of Mental Disorders" for the preparation of DSM-5 (Beijing, 2006).

In addition, he is spokesperson of the DFG Research Group on Placebo and Nocebo Mechanisms (2010-2019), member of the DFG Review Board (2012-2020), and of the DFG Commission "Clinical Trials". He co-chairs the ICD-11 Working Group on "Classification of Chronic Pain" of the WHO (since 2013). He is editor in chief of the journal "Clinical Psychology in Europe" [cpe.psychopen.eu] and board member of the European Association of Clinical Psychology and Psychological Treatment EACLIP [eaclipt org]. Rief was awarded the Distinguished International Affiliate, APA Division Health Psychology in 2014 and received a Distinguished Scientist Award from the International Society of Behavioral Medicine in 2014.

Scientific contribution

For many years, Rief's scientific work focused on the investigation of psychological factors in the development, maintenance and management of physical complaints. He is one of the leading scientists on "somatoform disorders " and, after "Web of Science", leads the international publication list on this topic. Together with Prof. Hiller (Mainz) he developed the frequently used questionnaire procedure SOMS (Screening for Somatoform Symptoms). As a nominated member of the Initial Group for the reformulation of the concept of somatoform symptom and associated in DSM-5, he was initially involved in this process, but later clearly criticized the concept of "somatic stress disorders" in DSM-5 presented in 2014.. In 2009, the German version of ICD-10 introduced the new diagnosis F45.41 "Chronic pain with mental and somatic factors" [Rief et al. in Current Opinion of Psychiatry]. This introduction was the result of a working group chaired by Prof. Rief. As co-chair together with R.-D. Treede he also chaired the working group on the classification of chronic pain in ICD-11. The classification proposal of this working group for chronic pain was officially included in the draft for ICD-11 by the World Health Assembly 2019 [icd.who.int], which will become the worldwide basis for the classification of physical and mental diseases.

Since 2004, he has increasingly expanded his research focus to the topic of "placebo and nocebo mechanisms in medical interventions" and since 2010 has headed a corresponding transregional DFG research group (DFG 1328). He was able to prove that patient expectations contributed significantly to the success of treatment, even in highly invasive medical interventions (such as cardiac surgery), and that modifying these patient expectations increases the success of such interventions. However, patient expectations are also essential for the development of side effects. Book publications on the subject of "biofeedback" (Rief & Birbaumer, 2000; 2006; 2010), somatisation disorder (Rief & Hiller, 2011) or on the subject of "psychosomatics and behavioural medicine" (Rief & Henningsen, 2015) are among the standard works in this field.

Since 2011, Rief has been the spokesperson of the Commission "Psychology and Psychotherapy Training", which works on behalf of the German Society of Psychology (DGPs) and the Association of Faculties of Psychology, and has been campaigning for a revision of the Psychotherapists Act to bring it into line with the training and continuing education structure of medical healing professions. The law was passed by the German Bundestag in September 2019 (PsychThGAusbRefG). In addition, since 2005 he has been particularly committed to the promotion of young scientists within clinical psychology. He developed the so-called "Marburg Model" to combine the doctoral phase with clinical training in psychotherapy. In 2014, in recognition of these achievements, he was awarded the Supervisor Prize of the Division of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy of the DGPs.

Rief was also a member of the initiative group for the foundation of a European Society of Clinical Psychology and is a board member of the European Association of Clinical Psychology and Psychological Treatment [eaclipt.org]. As Editor in Chief he launched the journal "Clinical Psychology in Europe", an Open Access journal that aims to promote new developments in the field of Open Science and does not call for Article Processing Charges [cpe.psychopen.eu].

Literature

Publication list W Rief Google Scholar

Publication list W Rief PubMed

• U. Bingel (for the Placebo Competence Group: U. Bingel, P. Enck, W. Rief, M. Schedlowski): Avoiding nocebo effects to optimize treatment outcome. In: JAMA. 312, 2014, S. 693–694.
• P. Enck, U. Bingel, M. Schedlowski, W. Rief: Minimize, maximize, or personalize? – What to do with the placebo response in medicine? In: Nature Review Drug Discovery. Vol. 12, 2013, S. 191–204.
• K. Petrie, T. Müller, F. Schirmbeck, L. Donkin, E. Broadbent, C. J. Ellis, G. Gamble, W. Rief: Effect of providing information about normal test results on patients' reassurance: randomised controlled trial. In: British Medical Journal. 334, 2007, S. 352–354.
• W. Rief, N. Birbaumer (Hrsg.): Biofeedback. Grundlagen, Indikation, Kommunikation und praktisches Vorgehen in der Therapie. 3. Auflage. Schattauer-Verlag, Stuttgart 2010.
• W. Rief, E. Broadbent: Explaining medically unexplained symptoms- Models and mechanisms. In: Clinical Psychology Review. 27, 2007, S. 821–841.
• W. Rief, J. A. Glombiewski: The hidden effects of blinded, placebo controlled randomized trials: An experimental investigation. In: Pain. 153, 2012, S. 2473–2477.
• W. Rief, P. Henningsen (Hrsg.): Psychosomatik und Verhaltensmedizin. Schattauer-Verlag, Stuttgart 2015.
• W. Rief, W. Hiller: Das Screening für somatoforme Störungen SOMS. Manual zum Fragebogen. 2., überarb. Auflage. Huber-Verlag, Bern 2008.
• W. Rief, A. Martin: How to use the new DSM-5 diagnosis Somatic Symptom Disorder in research and practice? – A critical evaluation and a proposal for modifications. In: Annual Review of Clinical Psychology. 10, 2014, S. 339–67.
• W. Rief, J. Avorn, A. J. Barsky: Medication-attributed adverse effects in placebo groups. Implications for assessment of adverse effects. In: Archives of Internal Medicine. 166(2), 2006, S. 155–160.
• W. Rief, A. J. Barsky, U. Bingel, B. Doering, R. Schwarting, M. Wöhr, U. Schweiger: Rethinking psychopharmacotherapy: The role of treatment context and brain plasticity in antidepressant and antipsychotic interventions. In: Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews. 60, 2016, S. 51–64. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2015.11.008.
• W. Rief, U. Bingel, M. Schedlowski, P. Enck: Mechanisms involved in placebo and nocebo responses and implications for drug trials. In: Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics. 90, 2011, S. 722–726.
• W. Rief, A. M. Heitmüller, K. Reisberg, H. Rüddel: Why reassurance fails in patients with unexplained symptoms– An experimental investigation of remembered probabilities. In: PLoS Medicine. 3 (8), 2006, S. e269. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0030269.
• W. Rief, S. Kaasa, R. Jensen, S. Perrot, J. W. S. Vlaeyen, R.-D. Treede, K. C. P. Vissers: The need to revise pain diagnoses in ICD-11. In: Pain. 149, 2010, S. 169–170.
• M. Schedlowski, P. Enck, W. Rief, U. Bingel: Neuro-Bio-Behavioral Mechanisms of Placebo and Nocebo Responses: Implications for Clinical Trials and Clinical Practice. In: Pharmacological Review. 67, 2015, S. 697–730.
• C. Seifart, M. Hofmann, T. Bär, J. Riera, U. Seifart, W. Rief: Breaking bad news – what patients want and what they get. Evaluating the SPIKES protocol in Germany. In: Annals of Oncology. 25, 2014, S. 707–711.
• R.-D. Treede, W. Rief, A. Barke, Q. Aziz, M. I. Bennett, R. Benoliel, M. Cohen, S. Evers, N. B. Finnerup, M. B. First, M. A. Giamberardino, S. Kaasa, E. Kosek, P. Lavandʼhomme, M. Nicholas, S. Perrot, J. Scholz, S. Schug, B. H. Smith, P. Svensson, J. W. S. Vlaeyen, S.-J. Wang: A classification of chronic pain for ICD-11. In: Pain. 156(6), 2015, S. 1003–1007 (shared first authorship of Treede, Rief & Barke).

External links

• Winfried Rief – Online publications and further informations at researchgate.net
• Prof. Dr. Winfried Rief – Website of the University of Marburg: W. Rief
• The Power of Expectation – Understanding the Placebo and Nocebo Phenomenon Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2/4 (2008): 1624–1637, 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2008.00121.x
• Symposium VtdK 2018: prof. dr. Winfried Rief (4/5) (YouTube)
• Placebos als bessere Medizin (SZ)
• Can Psychological Expectation Models Be Adapted for Placebo Research? Front. Psychol., 28 November 2016 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01876