Professor Andrew McDonnell reviews ‘The Age of Diagnosis: Sickness, Health, and Why Medicine Has Gone Too Far’ by Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan (2025). In this new publication, Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan deals with a number of highly sensitive areas, including potential and misdiagnosis of a range of conditions such as ADHD, autism, cancer, and long Covid. Dr O’Sullivan, a consultant in neurology in London, presents a view that overdiagnoses of many conditions leads to a race for explanat

Diagnostic overshadowing occurs when everything a person does is understood only through the lens of that diagnosis.