
The Age of Diagnosis
How Our Obsession with Medical Labels Is Making Us Sicker
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Narrated by:
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Suzanne O'Sullivan
About this listen
From a neurologist and the 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.
We live in an age of diagnosis. Conditions like ADHD and autism are on the rapid rise, while new categories like long Covid are being created. Medical terms are increasingly used to describe ordinary human experiences, and the advance of sophisticated genetic sequencing techniques means that even the healthiest of us may soon be screened for potential abnormalities. More people are labeled "sick" than ever before—but are these diagnoses improving their lives?
With scientific authority and compassionate storytelling, neurologist Suzanne O'Sullivan argues that our obsession with diagnosis is harming more than helping. It is natural when we are suffering to want a clear label, understanding, and, of course, treatment. But our current approach to diagnosis too often pathologizes difference, increases our anxiety, and changes our experience of our bodies for the worse.
Through the moving stories of real people, O'Sullivan compares the impact of a medical label to the pain of not knowing. She explains the way the boundaries of a diagnosis can blur over time. Most importantly, she calls for us to find new and better vocabularies for suffering and to find ways to support people without medicalizing them.
©2025 Suzanne O'Sullivan (P)2025 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“With grace, elegance, and compassion, The Age of Diagnosis slices through the confusion and the contradictions that have tied me in knots—both as a parent and as a clinician. Dr. O’Sullivan’s previous books made a big impression on me and influenced my clinical practice. This will do the same and more.”—Chris van Tulleken, author of Ultra-Processed People
“O’Sullivan explodes conventional wisdom about medical diagnoses. With clarity of prose and reasoning, The Age of Diagnosis should make all of us think about whether we are more or less healthy when we receive a diagnostic label.”—Elizabeth Loftus, distinguished professor, University of California, Irvine
“A brave and deeply empathetic book with a very important message.”—Henry Marsh, author of Do No Harm
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Story
Lauren Christensen is a thirtysomething editor in New York City when she meets her future husband, Gabe, a writer with whom she falls in love right away. Her beloved grandfather is dying, but the young couple is bringing new life into the family: Lauren and Gabe joyfully discover she is pregnant with their daughter, Simone. As Lauren faces the prospect of becoming a parent, she learns to let go of the fear of abandonment and need for control, but just weeks after their wedding, they learn that their worst nightmare has come true: Simone is dying in the womb.
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Beautiful
- By Ashley M. on 03-28-25
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Lights On
- How Understanding Consciousness Helps Us Understand the Universe
- By: Annaka Harris
- Narrated by: Annaka Harris
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Original Recording
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Is consciousness a fundamental building block of the universe, like gravity? Can humans develop new senses through neuroscience? And can artificial intelligence ever truly replicate the subjective experience of being conscious? Join Annaka Harris as she calls on distinguished experts in science and philosophy to find answers to today’s most perplexing questions about our minds and the universe at large.
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Disappointed
- By Amazon Customer on 04-01-25
By: Annaka Harris
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How to Feed the World
- The History and Future of Food
- By: Vaclav Smil
- Narrated by: Joe Jameson
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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We have never had to feed as many people as we do today. And yet, we misunderstand the essentials of where our food really comes from, how our dietary requirements shape us, and why this impacts our planet in drastic ways. As a result, in our economic, political, and everyday choices, we take for granted and fail to prioritize the thing that makes all our lives possible: food. In this ambitious, myth-busting book, Smil investigates many of the burning questions facing the world today.
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lots of dense information, hard to absorb.
- By chris on 05-20-25
By: Vaclav Smil
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In My Remaining Years
- By: Jean Grae
- Narrated by: Jean Grae
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In My Remaining Years, by creative juggernaut Jean Grae, debunks the myth that coming-of-age narratives should be reserved for the kids, providing a much-needed rallying cry for those of us still trying to figure it out in our forties. These laugh-out-loud essays cover everything from aging gracefully, what happens when you look for community and almost start a cult, befriending childhood demons, gender fluidity in middle age, the cost of being too fabulous, and the various gymnastics we do to avoid becoming our parents, taking us from her childhood in 1980s NYC to present-day Baltimore.
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Her amazing voice and storytelling ability
- By Roxanne Shante on 03-20-25
By: Jean Grae
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Unshrunk
- A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance
- By: Laura Delano
- Narrated by: Laura Delano
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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At age fourteen, Laura Delano saw her first psychiatrist, who immediately diagnosed her with bipolar disorder and started her on a mood stabilizer and an antidepressant. At school, Delano was elected the class president and earned straight-As and a national squash ranking; at home, she unleashed all the rage and despair she felt, lashing out at her family and locking herself in her bedroom, obsessing over death.
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A Rite of Passage For the Rest of Us
- By Metal Rabbit on 04-16-25
By: Laura Delano
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The Mesopotamian Riddle
- An Archaeologist, a Soldier, a Clergyman and the Race to Decipher the World's Oldest Writing
- By: Joshua Hammer
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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From the ruins of Persepolis to lawless outposts of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, The Mesopotamian Riddle whisks you on a wild adventure through the golden age of archaeology in an epic quest to understand our past.
By: Joshua Hammer
empathy masterclass
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The book we need right now
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Interesting though ableist
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Diagnosed to Death
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