A diagnosis can seem like a blessing, helping us to understand what might be ailing us physically and mentally. But what if a diagnosis can actually do us more harm than good?
Neurologist Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan talks to geneticist and science communicator Adam Rutherford about how diagnoses can risk turning healthy people into patients, with no benefit to their long-term health.
They discuss how categories like depression and ADHD are constantly shifting and expanding, meaning what is considered ‘normal’ radically changes all the time, and how health screening is increasingly drawing previously ‘healthy’ people into the category of disease.
O’Sullivan specialises in the investigation of complex epilepsy and also has an active interest in psychogenic disorders. Her first book It’s All in Your Head won the Wellcome Book Prize and the Royal Society of Biology Book Prize.
