However, it's possible to have rapid outbreaks of false information on this network that can't self correct in real time. For a person experiencing this rapid onset, there would be a sense that his biology is acting normally but at extreme activity levels (in an attempt to self correct) but information seems to be scrambled and erratic, unpredictable compared to normal. And when he arrives for professional psychiatric treatment he will be told his biology is failing and requires medication. — Mark Nyquist

While I appreciate this very noble theorizing or speculating, this is highly intractable to even be called a theory. Do we know how information get scrambled in one's mind? I mean, we have distortion of information based on the five senses -- senses are fallible. We can be deceived. At the same time, we sometimes think erroneously because we tend to jump to conclusions with not enough information. But all these have external causes.

To get a mental image of this, imagine a virus on a computer network. Agent Based Models are a way to computer model this and simple models can show progression of a virus moving from node to node on networks with some nodes affected and other nodes unaffected. In biological brains the biology can be functioning normally but the corrupted networks of mental content are the cause of the abnormal condition. — Mark Nyquist

No, I disagree with this analogy. Virus are tractable, they are predictable, otherwise we stand no chance in stopping them. I don't care if this is an organism or a computer virus.

My view is information exists only in deep brain functions so our senses just pass signals not information.

I don't follow why you mention external causes.

The analogy is to psychosis symptoms such as conspiracy theories. The specific reason I think this should be considered is an understanding that mental content is something emergent from physical brains but not the same thing. — Mark Nyquist

Yes. I think the analogy works up to a point, and bearing in 'mind' that talk of computer virus is itself an analogy from biology. But up to more or less the same point, a much earlier model of possession by evil spirits will also work. A false theory is created by a malicious agent, as is a computer virus, and is designed to infect, and take possession of the hardware and use it to spread itself.
And that moral story survives as the notion of white hat and black hat hackers/magicians.

Such an understanding seems to point to a policy of isolating infected persons, and brainwashing them by way of removing the infection. That is a dangerous understanding.

I would like us to put ourselves into the pictures and analogies we make. Is it perhaps a certain paranoia in us that we need to arm ourselves in advance with a theory by which to understand the mystery of the other? Is our theory of mental illness itself a virus that we are spreading, that is infecting the world.

Even on the internet it is proving very difficult to sort the memes of God, from those of the devil - truth and sanity from lies and folly.

The analogy is to psychosis symptoms such as conspiracy theories. — Mark Nyquist

For a long time we were told by the experts that depression was caused by a chemical imbalance. This is not longered considered the case. There's irony here. If you noticed that this model supported the pharmacological approach to dealing with depression (read: money for some) and thought this model was not the case and that certain groups with money and power were using a false model for their benefit, this could have been considered a kind of conspiracy theory. When, in fact, the belief in these chemical patterns that needed chemical solutions was a kind of pattern hallucination (at best) by the supposed experts. For other approaches to depression. For other models of what depression is caused by and how it can be treated
https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Connections-Uncovering-Depression-Unexpected/dp/163286830X
gives a nice overview.

Good points on preconceived theories. I was thinking more of a model for understanding and troubleshooting.

And generally, good models of how our brains work, and can fail, could make us more resistant to some of these psychological illnesses.

Stress by external events are a big part of it but some could also be how brains take in, process, store and manipulate information.