Every business depends on its customers, without exceptions. So the question becomes, what type of customers will help your business flourish? The answer is quite simple. Your customer base can be divided into two broad categories.

• The ones who will buy your product only once under a promotion
• The ones who will sign-up and continue to be your regulars clients

Most marketing efforts (like WordPress theme stores) are inclined at getting a customer to buy a theme or sign-up for the membership pack – usually with the help of attractive evergreen “one-time only” sales pitches. And they sure get the job done. With the right marketing pitch, marketers are able to achieve excellent conversion rates.

Your marketing efforts should be equally focused on keeping your regulars happy.

Why? Because, if your customers are happy doing business with you, they’ll surely come back to buy more of your product. At the end of the day, the happier you customer is, the more likely he is to keep buying your product and refer you to his circles.

You get the classic “word of mouth” referral which expands your consumer base and propels your business to the next level.

That’s the kind of relationship you’ll want to build with your customers.

To help you a little more in your endeavor, we’ve shortlisted the following 15 modern, professional and efficient Helpdesk, Knowledge Base (KB), FAQ and Support WordPress themes. Using these themes will help you avoid the cost of buying expensive help desk software.

1. Live Support

Live Support is a live chat helpdesk and support WordPress theme. With BuddyPress support, WPML compatibility, responsive design, 4 homepage layouts and more this theme is a great option for providing online support to customers.

2. KnowAll

KnowAll is a Knowledge Base support center theme package with intuitive features, KnowAll helps you reduce support queries and have happier customers.

By offering self-service support with a knowledge base, tutorials and troubleshooting, customers can help themselves without having to raise a support ticket. This frees up time for you and your support team.

Find out where your customers need help and fix it. The Knowledge Base analytics tool allows you to visualize visitor interaction, see what content is working and what is letting you down. Analyze view counts, feedback, search patterns and topics which result in the most queries.

It isn’t rocket science, but it is powerful and extremely useful for knowing where you should spend your time such as writing new articles where visitors are not finding results or refining existing content where visitors are raising a support ticket.

3. Ask Me

Ask Me is a fully responsive Q&A style Knowledgebase premium WordPress theme. This template is perfect for providing support for your products and services.

Having a great product does not mean that you will have no support. No matter how awesome you, your services or your products are people will always have questions for you. Make your life easier with a dedicated knowledgebase and support site using Ask Me. This theme makes it easy for you to keep track of user support requests, and for users to find answers to their questions.

A very useful aspect of this theme is the built-in options for questions, since they are what will make up your entire knowledgebase. Ask Me includes an “Ask Question” page template, support for user profiles, options for authors and users to both answers questions, support for users to “favorite” submitted questions and the ability to mark questions as solved. Plus each question entry displays the category, number of answers, number of views and other useful tidbits in the question entry shown on the homepage and category pages.

This theme also includes great options to make the theme match your business. Choose from boxed and full width layouts, 3 different headers, 10 color skins (or choose from unlimited colors to create your own), custom shortcodes, lots of widgets and more. Ask Me is a great option for your Q&A, FAQ or knowledgebase site.

4. Manual Online Docs

Manual is a an online documentation premium WordPress theme that you can use to provide online support for your product or service. Create beautiful and easy to use online docs, FAQs, knowledgebase or even a community forum in no time at all!

The theme comes with awesome features to help you better help your customers. Use the included FAQs to add common questions and answers, or to add user guides. Manual also includes a couple more neat features like a live user views counter and an upvoting system for users to let you know which answers are helpful.

You can also use Manual to create an online community forum since the theme includes complete support for the free bbPress plugin. Simply install the plugin and you’ll be able to setup community forums where you can have support staff go through and help customers, or where customers can help each other. Neat huh?

5. KnowHow

One of the top selling knowledgebase WordPress themes on the web, KnowHow is a great option for creating a helpdesk site in minutes. The theme makes it simple for users to find instant answers through FAQ and live search, plus the theme is translation ready so you can add docs for all your customers.

6. Q&A Engine

QAEngine is a lovely knowledgebase premium WordPress theme designed by Engine Themes. This would be a perfect fit for a support site, company FAQ website or a general question and answer type site. If you are selling a product or service, chances are you have a lot of support questions to deal with. No problem. QAEngine makes it easy to set up a knowledgebase and Q&A forum for your company. The theme is easy to install and setup, so you can have your site up and running in just minutes.

The theme includes plenty of options to make you and your users happy. Organize questions using tags and categories, then Accept answers as your support team (or other users) provide responses. Plus users can up-vote questions to bring them to your attention. Another great feature is the built-in points & badge system so users (or staff) who provide answers are rewarded for their hard work!

Other features include a clean and modern design, a styled intro page, advanced search options, question view counter, color options and more. QAEngine is the perfect theme for your company’s knowledgebase!

7. Helper

Helper is a responsive knowledgebase and support style WordPress theme that is fully responsive, compatible with bbPress forums, and includes custom post types and page templates to make building your support site easy.

8. HelpGuru

Customers want to find quick answers to their questions online, that’s why it is so important for you to build an online knowledgebase and help center. With HelpGuru just install the theme, add you articles, and let customers rate articles for helpfulness. Plus the theme support bbPress for forum support as well.

9. Altera

If you try Altera for your support site, you’ll find great features like unlimited layouts, custom widgets, live search, RTL support, social sharing integration, a fully responsive design and more.

10. Knowledge Press

KnowledgePress is a self-service knowledgebase with bbPress forum integration where your customers can help themselves. Add your product documentation, build your FAQs and respond to forum posts for better support and customer happiness.

11. TechDesk

TechDesk is a colorful helpdesk solution with a live search, FAQ system, custom widgets & shortcodes and more to help you help your buyers. Plus there are tons of options for styling, so you can customize the look of your site.

12. iKnowledge

iKnowldege is a clean and modern knowledgebase WordPress theme. Add helpful articles, documentation and FAQs to guide users on how to use your product or to walk them though troubleshooting.

13. Sentric

Sentric is an awesome support & knowledgebase theme with full support for the bbPress forums plugin (plus custom moderator tags for pending, resolved, etc.), and built-in options for adding knowledgebase and FAQ sections.

14. Flatbase

Flatbase is a clean and responsive knowledgebase style WordPress theme on Themeforest. This theme is perfect for creating an online knowledgebase for your product or service so customers can easily find the answer their looking for.

No matter what you sell (or even if you giveaway a product for free) people are going to have lots of questions. Creating a knowledgebase is a great way to provide answers to commonly asked questions in an easy to use format. Plus it means that you can quickly add new questions and answers in a snap. This makes support less stressful for you, and makes your customers much happier.

Flatbase also includes bbPress support. This way customers can share their experiences and help each other. This save you time since customers you’ve assisted before can now share their knowledge with other users. Another great feature is the “Like” support on posts, so your users can let you know which of your posts are most helpful.

Customizing Flatbase is easy. Use the built-in theme options panel to make your site one of a kind, and the live theme customizer means that you can change fonts and colors and see a preview of them before committing to your changes.

15. Lore

Lore is a knowledge base and documentation theme perfect for your help site. The theme includes options for adding a forum, support for the Elementor or WP Bakery page builder, and Gutenberg compatibility. Plus the theme is RTL and translation ready.

Why Do We Need Customer Support?

The secret to a successful online business is to deliver what the public demands. Your product should speak for itself and deliver great value to your customers. But even when your product is designed in the most user-friendly way as humanely possible, there is going to be people looking for help. And you as the service provider, must provide support.

Let’s take a look at a familiar example. Suppose you design a sophisticated WordPress theme with tons of useful features. Even if you have an awesome documentation aided with video tutorials, you’re going to have to provide timely customer support.

People expect answers when they pay for a product. If they aren’t able to run the $60 theme they just purchased (even if the fault is their own), they’re going to leave negative reviews.

Consider an alternative. If you are able to help out this confused client to his satisfaction, then chances are that he’ll happily recommend you to his circles.

Their product is really good, but their customer support is even better!

That’s the golden line you should be aiming for.

Customer Support Channels

Since we’re on the topic of customer support, I’ve taken the liberty of summing up some of the most popular form of customer support you see on the Internet today. If you’ve ever bought an online product or service (like a domain or a hosting service), you’ll surely have run into one of these.

Telephonic Customer Support

• Telephonic customer support offers real time personal assistance that builds an excellent customer relationship
• On the flip side it could be quite expensive as it requires 24×7 dedicated support staff for international business spread across different time zones
• Example: Most hosting companies like HostGator and BlueHost offer toll-free phone support

Live Chat

• The next best thing to telephonic customer support, live chat provides similar personal assistance to your customers, in real time.
• However, it is easier to maintain and is widely available.
• Businesses with lesser budget may employ this model.

Email Support

• The main advantage of customer support over email is that the customer faces no overhead of having to deal with helpdesk software. You could simply reply from your email app without having to login to a specialized helpdesk software.
• However on the flip side, it is quite unorganized since your inbox comprises of multiple messages from various sources.

Ticket Support System

• Ticket support system is the most widely available and commonly used customer support system. Almost all hosting companies rely on this.
• Each support request is assigned a Unique Ticket Number which can prioritized according to urgency, and categorized according to the department of support required.

4 Ways to Educate Your Customer

In this rapid information age, informing the customer about your product is turning out to be the most promising way to attract their loyalty.

Market your product well

#1 Features Page

This is a typical page displayed in almost every product. It job is to highlight the essential and outstanding features of your product in moderate details. You features page should have the minimum amount of copy possible. Ideally, it should be a list highlighting the best features of your product/service.

#2 Introductory Video

Depending on the type of product sold, you can also create a video depicting the product’s features and its usability. This will help your customer understand the product at great depths and will also act as a guide as and when they use it. Due to the visual interaction aspect, it reaches out to the customer personally, which in turn helps your cause.

#3 Knowledge Base

The Knowledge Base is a directory of articles and guides about your product. It provides your customers explicit details about your product(s). This becomes very helpful when you have a big inventory with similar type of products.

#4 FAQ Section

The frequently asked questions section, as the name suggests, is generated based on the feedback of initial testers, followed by future customers. This is a very efficient way of support as the FAQs are placed according to the frequency of the questions asked.

Process:

• The development of the FAQ section begins with the feedback from the initial testers. This forms the alpha stage of the testing process.
• Then the product is launched to closed group of people, who do the same job of the initial testers, but who have zero knowledge about the product. This forms the beta stage of the testing process.
• Combining these, the product is finally launched to the general public.

The FAQ Section is updated at regular intervals based on the comments and feedback of the customers. This is increasingly becoming the most useful and promising way of providing quick valuable support to your customers on a very large scale.

Now that you’ve made sure that your customer will be satisfied with your product as well as your customer service, you can finally sit back and relax as you now have created a loyal customer.

Keep your customer support top notch and you’ll never have to worry about having dissatisfied customers.

This is one of the fundamental ways of building a prosperous business. We hope that we’ve been able to help you in your search to find a theme to your liking, which will help you create a personalized and attractive customer support. Do let us know your thoughts. Happy selling!

How to achieve calm in a state of panic.

Source: Zoffness

In the face of COVID-19, we’re seeing a viral spread of anxiety contagion . Panic is as contagious as any pathogen and is dangerous in its own right. Research shows that when we see people panicking – buying up all available water, for example – our brains respond with a similar anxiety spike. We’re built that way because it can be adaptive in certain situations. But it can also be maladaptive . Sustained anxiety is literally bad for your health: The more you panic, the less functional your immune system becomes.

The science of anxiety is this: in the face of a real or perceived emergency, your sympathetic nervous system (SNS) kicks on, triggering the release of a stress hormone called cortisol . Over time, cortisol suppresses your immune system, causing a decrease in white blood cells – the cells that help you fight off viruses — putting you at greater risk of infection. The more you panic, the less able your body is to fight off illness, and the more prone you are to getting – and staying – sick. It’s therefore important to manage your stress response. These tips can help:

1. Stop obsessively checking the news. Establish a time ONCE A DAY to read the news, watch TV headlines, and check social media. Constant updates are stressful and you don’t need them. Want the news? Here it is: The virus is spreading, we’re in a global state of emergency, don’t hang out in big groups or travel, wash your hands, wear masks, stay home, and physically distance yourself from others. Scary, yes? Great. You know the news, friends. Check it once a day, then go do other things.

2. Check your sources. Read official news or none at all. Do NOT get your news from social media, your freaked-out friends, or any website that isn’t reputable. You’re prone to believing the things you read when you’re anxious , so carefully filter what information goes into your brain. The interwebz are flooded with fake news , inflammatory reports, and panic-inducing sensationalism. Indeed, that’s how most news outlets win followers. The CDC is your best source for reliable health updates.

3. Download these relaxation apps:

• Headspace
• Calm
• Stop Breathe Think
• Relax Melodies
• Insight Timer

These websites also have great guided meditations for anxiety relief:

• Palouse Mindfulness
• Jefferson University Hospital
• Tara Brach
• UCLA

Plan to do one guided relaxation exercise twice a day, morning and evening, as if you’re taking anxiety medication . Research shows that these strategies are just as effective, and similarly change your brain chemistry. Administer as needed anytime you feel panicky.

4. Don’t contribute to the panic. By all means, talk to friends and family about your fears. But do NOT flood Facebook and social media with your anxieties. On Twitter today an *uninfected* MD posted that she’s written a will and has said goodbye to her children. People are already terrified; how does that help? Take care of your friends and loved ones by reducing anxiety contagion. Hold off on posting those photos of cleaned-out grocery stores and re-sharing that horror story you just heard. Avoid SHOUTY CAPS and EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!! As tempting as it is, please don’t attempt to predict the future, especially if it’s dystopian . If you have friends who are posting inflammatory posts, temporarily mute them.

5. Maintain social relationships. What’s the worst punishment you can give a human being? It isn’t prison and it isn’t Thanksgiving traffic. The answer is solitary confinement , otherwise known as social isolation . What does it say about us that the worst thing you can do to us is isolate us from others…? Humans are social animals. We’re genetically wired to need each other for food, shelter, and protection against predators. This is never as true as it is during a crisis. In the presence of others, your brain releases chemicals like serotonin (which raises mood), dopamine (confers feelings of pleasure and reward), and endorphins – your natural pain-killers. So even though we’re avoiding group gatherings, make sure to keep in close touch with friends and family. Schedule Facetime dates and make phone calls. Start group threads. Make virtual dinner dates, online coffee dates, and attend meetings online. Start a neighborhood listserv and offer to help one another. You can even virtually watch movies with friends who live far away. And don’t forget to cuddle your pets – Fuzz Therapy is real .

6. Establish a daily schedule. Social distancing and isolating at home present their own unique challenges, one of which is the loss of your daily routine. This can make us feel anxious and dysregulated. Create a new routine that involves as many components of your regular life as possible, including a wake-time, a sleep-time, exercise, social engagement, and 3 meals. Impose structure as if it was a normal work day: Set your alarm in the morning, exercise, shower, eat breakfast, sit down to do some work, take scheduled breaks, etc.

7. Separate work space from living space. If you’re working from home, carving out a work space will help you separate work from the rest of your life. This can help you stay organized and focused; more importantly, it can help you feel less trapped and claustrophobic. Your work space can be an office, a writing desk in the corner, even the dining room table – as long as it’s a designated work space separate from your regular activities of daily living. When you’re done with work for the day, leave that space – and all work – behind.

8. Leave the house. Don’t fall into the trap of endlessly sitting on the couch in your pajamas for days on end. It will only make you feel imprisoned, and increases the likelihood that you’ll get *more* anxious and depressed . Get out and see the sky, even if you just stand in the sun for 10-minute intervals. Drive to a remote location and take a walk, or park at your favorite lookout. Go for a “socially-distanced” walk, water your garden, bring the dog to a park. (To dispell a rumor: pets CANNOT give you coronavirus , experts say .) Don’t forget yer mask!

9. Get out into nature. Research shows that nature – trees, birdsong, sun, sky – improves mood, lowers stress and anxiety, reduces blood pressure, and improves overall sense of well-being. Stand outside in the sun and breathe fresh air. Go on a solo bird-watching walk with binoculars. Study bumblebees in the backyard. Read in your garden. If you need to stay inside, jump online to witness the UC Berkeley falcons hatch their eggs (there are 4)! Or download an app like Rain Rain , and listen to soothing nature sounds. It can really help.

10. Exercise! One of the biggest risks of staying home and inside is being sedentary. Our bodies are built to move, and we need exercise to stay healthy and sane. When we exercise, our brains produce important neurochemicals that regulate mood, like serotonin, and our bodies eat up stress hormones like cortisol. This makes exercise particularly important in times of high stress. Go for a run or walk outside someplace remote. Take a long bike ride in the hills. Craft a workout routine in your yard. Do push-ups, sit ups, strength training, weight-lifting, yoga videos, and cardio videos at home.

11. Distract, soothe, and stay busy. If you don’t have anything to do, your mind will fixate on your anxieties. Distract and soothe using physical activities (build something, draw, write, bake, exercise), cognitive activities that engage your mind (Sudoku, crossword puzzles, books, movies, board games, podcasts), and sensations (take a bath, drink a mug of hot tea, eat a favorite meal, listen to soothing music). This is the time to take care of brain and body.

12. Get support. In the face of a global pandemic, anxiety is NORMAL – not a sign of mental illness. There are therapists out there trained to help us navigate this panic, and there’s never been a better time to get one . Most have migrated online and have extra openings. Try Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), or sign up for breath work with expert physiotherapists to help lower anxiety. (Try these breathing practices daily, they’re great.)

13. Whiskey. This one comes with plenty of caveats, but I’m pretty sure this is why whiskey was invented, folks.

Please share this post with anyone who needs some anxiety-relief. Stay safe and stay sane, everyone. This, too, shall pass.

There is a war being waged over whether the human relationship will remain central to therapy (that battle is well-articulated by psychologist Todd Essig). Virtual therapy is a potential step toward dehumanization. There is no argument—physical co-presence and all that goes along with it, subtle visual cues, scents, chemistry—just isn’t the same as an image or a voice on the line.

We can imagine high-tech VR therapy, hyperreal, augmented, and transcending physicality. Why not jack into the brain and conjure something more-than—but today’s technology is a dim forerunner of that science-fiction reality.

Pragmatically, teletherapy is useful, was arriving regardless, and, courtesy of coronavirus , is now suddenly here . As the potential for distress from COVID-19 increases, the effect of isolation, failure of trust in authority, as-yet-unrealized consequences, the sense of fear from vulnerability—in spite of resilience , people need support and therapy.

With this in mind, as a practicing therapist and co-founder of Neighborhood Psychiatry , where our staff has quickly shifted to telepsychiatry, here are observations about teletherapy from both decades of practice as well as recent events:

1. Teletherapy can be more intimate than regular therapy. Therapy, especially long-term insight-oriented therapy, creates a deep bond. Sharing and opening up fosters closeness. Therapists generally keep professional boundaries, so even the most open therapist is relatively anonymous compared to people in therapy, creating an intimacy difference (or gradient).

Teletherapy feels closer for many. Speaking on the telephone can be very personal. Cradling a telephone engages the sense of touch, typically minimized in therapy. It makes a difference whether via cellphone, a personal extension of the self, a hunched-up laptop, or a big screen with a comfortable desk. The embodied experience is different with each as is the meaning.

2. You get to see people in their natural habitat. This is something you can’t get with in-person therapy. While we always say to find a quiet, private space where you won’t be interrupted, life happens. As with talking, where we censor what we say and don’t say, it’s important to note what we show on video—and what we don’t.

Kids barge in, people walk around, holding their phones up for a virtual tour, giving glimpses of beloved pets formerly only the subject of tales, call from intimate locations in casual mode, and all kinds of things.

The “experiment” of therapy is less controlled than in an office just talking, but it is more alive and rich in important ways. This is true for both patient and therapist, varying depending on how their respective spaces are set-up.

3. Patients may feel more secure. There can be a greater sense of control. You are on your own turf, leveling the playing field compared with going to a clinician’s office. The power dynamic feels evened-out.

Compared with past traditional therapy, patients may express feelings differently—ending the session by tapping that beautiful red hang-up icon first. While some patients track the time and end the session, more often than not therapists say when it’s time to stop.

The patient’s experience toward the therapist and therapy, the “transference,” is very different with teletherapy.

4. Countertransference is a double-edged sword. With a situation like COVID-19, where therapists and patients are likely to share adversity and prospects for resilience , there are risks and benefits to teletherapy which aren’t there when virtual meetings are for other reasons.

On one hand, being in it together can enhance the bond and the sharing, bringing things up which are very important which otherwise might not have ever surfaced, for example around mutual empathy and caregiving . Patients have a chance to show concern for the therapist they usually suppress. In moderation, mutual vulnerability can spur therapeutic growth.

On the other hand, therapists may get drawn into treatment-interfering or destructive enactments because of difficulty keeping boundaries during crisis. Boundaries may be too permeable, too rigid, or both. Therapists may over-identify, sharing too much, trying too hard, playing out their own fears, or withholding excessively.

5. You can move around. Research shows that moving around while thinking improves creativity and problem-solving. This seems to be because motor systems, the nervous and muscular activity which allows us to move, is tied closely with thinking and feeling. You can do that with teletherapy, within reason.

Some patients may also find they think more clearly while doing something else, though that can also be a distraction. These factors should be explicitly addressed. People may also be reminded of things in their homes that are important to discuss, whereas in the office they may have trouble remembering what to talk about.

6. It may be easier to talk about difficult subjects. For people who have experienced abuse at the hands of another person, being in physical proximity may sound the alarm as PTSD is from betrayal in an intimate relationship. This complicates the therapeutic relationship.

For patients with difficulty being close for any reason, whether personality -based, the result of trauma , abuse or bullying , or for other reasons, virtual therapy often feels safer. The increased detachment can both help and hinder therapy, depending on where in the process it comes up.

From a safe physical remove, patients may be able to take risks they wouldn’t in person, including bringing up painful memories and complicated feelings about the therapist and therapy.

7. Teletherapy facilitates care. Many people don’t have therapists in their area or psychiatric treatment. Telemedicine addresses this problem. Teletherapy may also be cost-effective with lower overhead—no rent or commuting expenses, for instance.

For both, teletherapy may be more convenient. Many therapists, however, prefer to keep personal and professional spaces and identities more distinct—this can be an issue in a small city apartment without room for a home office.

8. Clinician burnout may be reduced. For many practitioners, teletherapy allows for a better quality of life. Reduced costs, more time, the ability to take breaks between sessions, control one’s schedule, and manage home responsibilities more easily make telemedicine appealing. If the therapist is in a good frame of mind, the therapy is likely to go better. However, many therapists report teletherapy is more draining without the invigorating human in-person interaction.

9. You can have breakthroughs you didn’t before. Multiple people have remarked that being cut off from others, and knowing others are in the same situation, makes them feel better understood. There is a powerful sense that others can now relate to being isolated and rejected.

This can be a relief and can also open the door for insight and epiphany. The sense of urgent and immediate need, the sense of danger, can mobilize survival instincts, heightening the sense of day-to-day meaning and purpose. A threat to mortality can make the need for change more pressing. Also, having a concrete, real-and-present reason for all that anxiety can be a profound, transformative experience.

For these reasons and more, teletherapy may be an important factor in precipitating developmental leaps.

Will therapy ever be the same?

Time will tell whether coronavirus permanently alters the therapy landscape, or accelerates the inevitable—or whether all of life will ever return to how it was, or whether we learn anything from this experience . And, what will it be like when we start meeting in-person again?

In the meantime, a lot of folks are experiencing teletherapy immersion, motivated to make it work regardless of their opinion—as long as the internet and phones keep us virtually connected.

The research , conducted by a team of Imperial College London scientists on 10,000 subjects, found if individuals did not know what drugs they were given, they were no more likely than recipients of sugar pills to report symptoms such as muscle pain, sleep disturbance and cognitive impairment. When participants in the second trial phase were told the drugs were statins, rates of reported side effects shot up, with claimed muscle pain being 41 percent more common.

UK National Health Service guidance recommends using cholesterol-busting drugs for around 40 percent of adults, although research suggests more than half of statin patients abandon them within a year, due to side effects.

“The enormous amount of publicity related to the side effects of these drugs could be dangerous. It’s a huge problem affecting tens if not hundreds of thousands of patients worldwide… once people know they are taking the drug, things that commonly occur on their own might be attributed to that drug,” the team said in a statement .

The researchers note statins induced a “nocebo effect” in subjects, the opposite phenomenon to the well-known placebo effect, wherein beneficial responses are felt by subjects who take “dummy” drugs as part of a trial.

© East News / Science Photo Library

British NHS Wasting Millions on Unnecessary Clinical Procedures: Watchdog

By knowing what drug they were taking, subjects in the study “developed” side effects associated with the drug, which were not in fact related to the actual chemistry of the drug. This is not to say symptoms were purely psychological, or invented — patients can experience very real pain as a result of the nocebo effect, and the expectation the drug will cause harm.

The team said the mislabeling of statins as dangerous was a “tragedy” akin to the MMR scandal , which saw erroneous fears of vaccinations lead to a decline in childhood vaccinations against measles, mumps and rubella, and a corresponding spike in incidences of each disease thereafter. Fears of statin side effects may well have heightened the incidence of heart attacks and strokes, the team believe, and they call for the removal of warnings from the drug’s packaging in future.

Warnings were added in 2009 by the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, following a series of observational studies that suggested such links. The researchers said the regulator did not make a “profound value judgement” based on available evidence, and should never have taken such action.

Nonetheless, the study did not conclude statins were without any side effects — the drugs does increase the risk of contracting diabetes by 9 percent, and its use may be connected to uncommon side effects such as myopathy , resulting in muscle weakness — although the benefit of reducing risk of heart attacks and strokes “overwhelms” the risk of side effects.

However, some expressed skepticism at the findings. London cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra, who has previously argued against mass prescribing statins on the basis they have at best marginal benefits, noted the study was funded by drug company Pfizer, a producer of statins, implying the study was not independent.

He said the misrepresentation of the benefits of statins would unfold to become “one of the biggest scandals in the history of medicine.”

Some Twitter users defended his position.