Transmission? I mean, in the history of mental illness there have been many instances of psychiatric contagion. E.g. the laughing plague of 1962, the sleep sick

Transmission? I mean, in the history of mental illness there have been many instances of psychiatric contagion. E.g. the laughing plague of 1962, the sleep sickness of 2010 in Kazakhstan, and I suppose you could say that 'suggestibility' is a form of transmission (the most famous case for multiple personality disorder has been said to be based on the suggestions of the treating physicians.) It's known that when there are celebrity deaths (caused by their own hands) an uptick in the average rate in the population follows media coverage. The mind can make you ill. This much is uncontroversial in psychiatry. The flip-side is the mind can make you better. There is the classic concept of placebos. A story I recall comes from war times when doctors ran out of pain killers and administered saline instead. Just the presence of the doctors reassuring treatment was enough to bring about relief in the patient. This is in an instance where someone had a gun shot wound. So the placebo effect (and our belief) is strong enough that it can be on par with drugs like morphine. I'd say that this explains many cases of faith healers. They really are 'healing' the patient but not via any magical means. The placebo effect is pretty fascinating but it gets even more twisted. It would seem that the effect can be observed even if the doctor tells the patient they're receiving a placebo. The doctor says 'I'm giving you nothing.' And the patient hears: well, you're the doctor, you know what's best. They feel relived in some way from that more than nothing. Effectively, the mind makes it real. Then you have things like classical conditioning being used to reduce highly toxic drug side effects. A toxic (but beneficial drug) can be conditioned with a stimulus (like a bell.) Then the dosage of the drug is reduced while the bell is sounded. The body responds as if it were given the full dose but without all the side effects. Really neat research. I do think many unexplained illnesses could be the result of negative ingrained conditioning. I think a perfect example of physical effects caused by psychiatric symptoms is anxiety. People who have anxiety usually don't describe it all with emotional terms. They say things like 'my heart is racing', 'im breathing too fast', 'my muscles are twitching.' A person could go to a doctor for a digestive issue only to find out that they're just 'anxious.' If psychiatric contagion exists and psychiatric illness can cause physical symptoms. Then (what appears to be) physical illness is transferable. That's really intense if you think about it.