It's All in Your Head

What happens when the symptoms are real, but the tests say nothing is wrong? Neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan enters the difficult territory of psychosomatic illness, where patients can experience disabling physical symptoms without the structural disease or damage they and their doctors expect to find. Through extraordinary clinical cases, she explores dissociative seizures, functional neurological symptoms and other perplexing conditions, while showing why a psychosomatic diagnosis must never become an excuse for careless diagnosis or dismissal. Moving between patient stories, neurological investigation and the history of medicine, O’Sullivan challenges the stubborn division between mind and body. She asks why psychosomatic illness carries such stigma, how doctors arrive at the right diagnosis and why patients so often experience a psychological explanation as an accusation. For readers interested in medicine, psychology and the mysteries of human experience, It’s All in Your Head makes a compassionate case for taking these conditions seriously. ‘A fascinating glimpse into the human condition… a forceful call for society to be more open about such suffering’ Daily Mail ‘Honest, fascinating and necessary’ The Times