The Age of Diagnosis: How Our Obsession with Medical Labels Is Making Us Sicker

From a neurologist and award-winning author of The Sleeping Beauties, a meticulous and compassionate exploration of how our culture of medical diagnosis can harm, rather than help, patients

I’m a neurologist. Diagnosis is my bread and butter. So why then would I, an experienced medical doctor, be very careful about which diagnosis I would pursue for myself or would be willing to accept if foisted upon me?

We live in an age of diagnosis. The advance of sophisticated genetic sequencing techniques means that we may all soon be screened for potential abnormalities. The internet provides a vast array of information that helps us speculate about our symptoms. Conditions like ADHD and Autism are on the rapid rise, while other new categories like Long Covid are driven by patients themselves.

When we are suffering, it feels natural to seek a diagnosis. We want a clear label, understanding, and, of course, treatment. But is diagnosis an unqualified good thing? Could it sometimes even make us worse instead of better?

Through the moving stories of real people, neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan explores the complex world of modern diagnosis, comparing the impact of a medical label to the pain of not knowing. With scientific authority and compassionate storytelling, she opens up new possibilities for how we might approach our health and our suffering.

Dr. Suzanne O’Sullivan has been a consultant neurologist and clinical neurophysiologist since 2004, specializing in complex epilepsy and functional neurological disorders. She is the author of three books: It’s All in Your Head, which won the 2016 Wellcome Book Prize and the Royal Society of Biology general book prize, Brainstorm, and The Sleeping Beauties, which was shortlisted for the Royal Society book prize and for the Next Big Ideas club.