Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the e-ARC. This was a well written and fasicnating book about the way diagnosis has changed and what that means for our health.

This was a thoughtful and interesting look into the current medical world and the changes in the way people are diagnosed and medicalised.

O'Sullivan is balanced in her interviews and opinions and takes care to never actually come down on one side of the debate or the other and her look into the ethics of genetic testing were fascinating.

From experience I know that actually getting a diagnosis for a health condition does relieve some of the pressures in daily life but it is also a label that you do have to live with.

The Age of Diagnosis discusses many conditions such as Huntington’s disease, Lyme disease, long Covid, cancer, autism and ADHD. The question of diagnosis is considered throughout with the idea that a diagnosis can be negative. Healthy people are turned into patients through genetic testing and diagnosis. Ultimately, a diagnosis changes over time to envelop more people and include more symptoms. This can be both negative and positive as seen by Autism with low and high functioning autistic people.

This was really good and I had a great time reading it. It opened my mind to things I hadn’t considered before and made me question things. My favourite parts were the discussion on autism, ADHD and Lyme disease. I personally do think we are going too far with medicine in science and this book illustrates that. For example, people who think they have Lyme disease but have never encountered the ticks or bacteria that leads to the disease. Plus this talked about the issue of paying for a diagnosis through private healthcare. I really agreed with the autism section on how the diagnosis has expanded so much to include high functioning people and people who cannot function on their own. This was really good and I think it’s an important read.