Religion

But if you prefer the language of the direct quote, it doesn't change the point all that much.

As far as the "placebo effect," how much have you actually dealt with mental health issues?

It's not like physical health where you measure a health outcome in blood tests or lives saved. In mental treatment, if someone says they feel "sad" and you give them lollipops they may say they "feel better." Congratulations you just proved that lollipops improved mental health. Placebo? Sure. Does that mean we should not supply prisoners with lollipops? Now send those same sad people to a person they believe to be a psychologist, but isn't. They may "feel better" just talking to that person. It may work just as well as visiting an actual psychologist. And it will vary a lot from person to person.

I didn't even get into all the other complications of mental health treatment, where practical diagnosis and delivery is often very different from laboratory conditions, at least when it's not the pill popping kind.

I don't know you, so I don't know how much you've dealt with mental health in your family, but I've dealt with it A LOT and I can promise you there are people for whom going to church is part of the cure and nobody cares at all whether its a placebo or not because they aren't dead or bouncing off the walls.

Which is not the same as saying that fundamentalist nutjob churches are a good thing.