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The Age of Diagnosis: Are Medical Labels Doing Us More Harm Than Good?

The Age of Diagnosis: Are Medical Labels Doing Us More Harm Than Good?

Suzanne O’Sullivan

2025

Genres: BiographyScience & TechnologyMedicine & Nursing

From autism to allergies, ADHD to long Covid, more people are being labelled with medical conditions than ever before. Are we actually becoming less healthy? Or are we medicalising normal human differences? Includes chapters on: -ADHD -Autism -Long Covid -Lyme Disease -Genetic screening -Cancer screening -Huntington's Disease The boundaries between sickness and health are being redrawn. Mental health categories are shifting and expanding all the time, radically altering what we consider to be 'normal'. Genetic tests can now detect pathologies decades before people experience symptoms, and sometimes before they're even born. An accurate diagnosis can bring greater understanding and of course improved treatment. But many diagnoses aren't as definitive as we think. And in some cases they risk turning healthy people into patients. Drawing on the stories of real people, as well as decades of clinical practice and the latest medical research, Dr Suzanne O'Sullivan overturns long held assumptions and transforms how we think about illness and health. Praise for The Age of Diagnosis: 'Revelatory. Slices through the contradictions.' - CHRIS VAN TULLEKEN 'So well-written... critically important.' - RANGAN CHATTERJEE 'A doctor's brilliant study of the dangers of overdiagnosis' - GUARDIAN 'Compassionate and bracingly independent thinking' - THE TIMES 'Exceptional. Chapter by brilliant chapter, it raises fundamental questions we should all be asking.' - NEW STATESMAN *As heard on Radio 4 Book of the Week, Today, Good Morning Britain, Sky News and more.*

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