America in the Age of Diagnosis

Plain English with Derek Thompson

America is sicker than ever. That’s what the data says, anyway.

Psychological and psychiatric diagnoses have soared. Between the 1990s and the mid-2000s, bipolar disorder among American youth grew by a factor of 40, while the number of children diagnosed with ADHD increased by a factor of 7. Rates of PTSD, anxiety, and depression have soared, too.

Perhaps in previous decades doctors missed millions of cases of illness that we’re now catching. Or perhaps, as the New York Times writer David Wallace Wells has written, “we are not getting sicker—we are attributing more to sickness.”

We used to be merely forgetful. Now we have ADHD. We used to lack motivation. Now we’re depressed. We used to be introverted. Now we experience social anxiety.

Today’s guest is Suzanne O’Sullivan, a neurologist and the author of 'The Age of Diagnosis: How Our Obsession with Medical Labels Is Making Us Sicker'. O’Sullivan argues that too many doctors today are pathologizing common symptoms in a way that’s changing the experience of the body for the worse. When doctors turn healthy people into patients, it’s not always clear if they’re reducing the risk of future disease or introducing anxiety and potentially harmful treatments to a patient who's basically fine.

Rather than see the age of diagnosis as something all good or all bad—a mitzvah or a disease—I want to see it as a social phenomenon, something that is good and bad and all around us.

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected].

Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Suzanne O’Sullivan

Producer: Devon Baroldi

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