Nocebo

This will come in handy later:

n its original application, "nocebo" had a very specific meaning in the medical domains of pharmacology, and nosology, and aetiology.

It was a subject-oriented adjective that was used to label the harmful, injurious, unpleasant, or undesirable reactions (or responses) that a subject manifested (thus, "nocebo reactions" or "nocebo responses") as a result administering an inert dummy drug, where these responses had not been chemically generated, and were entirely due to the subject's pessimistic belief and expectation that the inert drug would produce harmful, injurious, unpleasant, or undesirable consequences.

In these cases, there is no "real" drug involved, but the actual harmful, injurious, unpleasant or undesirable biochemical, physiological, behavioural, emotional, and/or cognitive consequences of the administration of the inert drug are very real.

A "classic" example of the nocebo response is someone dying of fright after being bitten by a non-venomous snake.

From Wikipedia