On Overdiagnosis with Suzanne O'Sullivan

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Our guest today is Suzanne O'Sullivan, the author of the book The Age of Diagnosis: Sickness, Health and Why Medicine Has Gone Too Far. Suzanne is a neurologist, clinical neurophysiologist, and writer. She has been a consultant since 2004 and has been at The National Hospital for Neurology and The Epilepsy Society since 2011. Her specialist interests are in epilepsy and in improving services for people who suffer with functional neurological disorders.

Suzanne qualified in medicine in 1991 from Trinity College Dublin. In addition to academic publications in her field, she is an author of award-winning non-fiction books, each focusing on her medical casework.

Her 2016 book, It's All in Your Head: True Stories of Imaginary Illness, won the Wellcome Book Prize, and the Royal Society of Biology's General Book Prize, for "for an accessible, engaging and informative life sciences book written for a non-specialist audience". Her book, The Sleeping Beauties: And Other Stories of Mystery Illness, was shortlisted for the 2021 Royal Society Science Book Prize.

We talk about:

• Is there an epidemic of overdiagnosis
• Extending the definitions of disorders
• The rise of ADHD and Autism diagnosis
• The impact of this on either end of the spectrum
• Has this had a positive or negative effect on mental health
• Medicalising natural mood swings and differences
• Illness as identity
• Cancer screening and proactive surgery

Let’s analyse

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