definitely suffering...but not for the reasons they think they are. Coworkers and I just had a discussion about this 2 minutes ago.
Yeah it's hard to know. The disease sounds bogus but at some point it ceases to matter whether the physical manifestations are real as long as the mind thinks they are.
I have a wonderful family friend who is a charming, vivacious 22-year-old girl. She was a serious athlete and dancer in high school. During her freshman year of college she got Lyme disease, and there was a delay in treatment. She has essentially been without the use of her legs for about 3 years now, and the rest of her body is wasting as well. She has received nearly every kind of test and/or treatment you can imagine. The doctors (including docs at places like the Mayo Clinic) are stumped. Meanwhile, she is cheerful and not at all a person inclined to look for sympathy. The current medical thinking about major post-Lyme symptoms is that they are psychosomatic, but it is indisputably the case that this girl is wasting away and would want nothing more than to be better. I have no idea if her physical symptoms are in some way psychosomatic but I am absolutely certain they are real.
Morgellons sounds highly questionable in terms of causation, but it also sounds like a really really shitty and uncomfortable thing to suffer from.