alt Hacker NewsNot necessarily fake. Mind/body homeostasis is WAY more complicated than that.
To use a computing analogy, which doesn't map perfectly onto the body, if consciousness awareness is userland, you can have things go wrong which are localised in ring 0 - brain drugs will be to some degree effective on those, that doesn't mean it's fake or made up.
In reality there are fuzzy boundaries and feedback loops everywhere. SSRIs treating this isn't any more mysterious than NSAID painkillers being somewhat effective for acute depression.
It's probably a whole set of feedback processes that get screwed up, hence the panoply of symptoms, inserting a hard stop into one part of the loop can be enough to kick the system back into a better functioning state.
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I think there are strong links between the immune system, the autonomic system, and the brain. A dysregulation immune system can seriously mess with you.
The classic psychological explanation is the patient only thinks they are sick. But the reality is their body is behaving like they are sick. Worse the classic explanation why you feel sick is 'toxins' from an infection and that is wrong. It's your reaction to feedback from your immune system.
Thank you, these overly simplistic first-order-only analysis of extremely complex phenomena drive me nuts.