That you can see improvements in people with long covid by giving them SSRIs isn’t clear evidence it’s partly fake or a “social contagion”. Whatever improvements recorded are just as easily explained by the fact that being sick for months is depressing and alienating and a bunch of people think you’re faking it.

On top of that, the SSRI article you linked suggests a biochemical mechanism by which SSRIs might be acting (i.e. not by making something “fake” go away, by actually treating the cause of something real)

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MrBuddyCasino 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Why then do SSRIs also work on fibromyalgia, Morgellons, Chronic Lime and Chronic Fatigue?

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Aurornis an hour ago | parent [-]

Morgellons isn’t a real disease. It’s a mental health condition.

SSRIs do not “work on” those other conditions, but depression is highly comorbid with serious chronic illnesses. SSRIs improving some symptoms is to be expected when depression symptoms overlap with the condition.

	▲	MrBuddyCasino an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I'm somewhat open to this line of thinking, but it seems in these cases, there is a very fuzzy boundary between the symptoms of depression and "the real illness": brain fog, lack of energy etc. I've seen healthy, active and successful people be affected, where the cause of "long covid" seems unlikely to be psychological. But there is no denying that, shall we say "a certain type" of person seems to be overrepresented in these cases, and for them it is very attractive to attach the label "long covid" to something that previously existed. I guess that until we have discovered the biological mechanism underlying this phenomenon, it will be hard to cleanly separate these two cases, but from what I've seen I find it likely that this bipartition really exists.