Placebo: medication or context?

"Understanding placebo and nocebo effects is important for both clinicians and neuroscientists. Placebo responses are substantial across diverse clinical disorders, and, in some cases, are related to objective pathology and survival. A large part of the overall therapeutic response to drugs, surgery, psychotherapy and other treatments may be due to the treatment context — and thus mechanisms shared with placebo effects — rather than the specific treatment itself."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6013051/