It's All in Your Head
Stories from the Frontline of Psychosomatic Illness
Published on 14. April 2016
Book
Paperback/Softback
336 pages
978-0-09-959785-8 (ISBN)
Description
A neurologist explores the very real world of psychosomatic illness.
Pauline first became ill when she was fifteen. What seemed to be a urinary infection became joint pain, then life-threatening appendicitis. After a routine operation Pauline lost all the strength in her legs. Shortly afterwards, convulsions started. But Pauline's tests are normal: her symptoms seem to have no physical cause whatsoever.
This may be an extreme case, but Pauline is not alone. As many as a third of people visiting their GP have symptoms that are medically unexplained. In most, an emotional root is suspected which is often the last thing a patient wants to hear and a doctor to say.
We accept our hearts can flutter with excitement and our brows can sweat with nerves, but on this journey into the very real world of psychosomatic illness, Suzanne O'Sullivan finds the secrets we are all capable of keeping from ourselves.
'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
Pauline first became ill when she was fifteen. What seemed to be a urinary infection became joint pain, then life-threatening appendicitis. After a routine operation Pauline lost all the strength in her legs. Shortly afterwards, convulsions started. But Pauline's tests are normal: her symptoms seem to have no physical cause whatsoever.
This may be an extreme case, but Pauline is not alone. As many as a third of people visiting their GP have symptoms that are medically unexplained. In most, an emotional root is suspected which is often the last thing a patient wants to hear and a doctor to say.
We accept our hearts can flutter with excitement and our brows can sweat with nerves, but on this journey into the very real world of psychosomatic illness, Suzanne O'Sullivan finds the secrets we are all capable of keeping from ourselves.
'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
Reviews / Votes
Doctors' tales of their patients' weirder afflictions have been popular since Oliver Sacks... Few of them, however, are as bizarre or unsettling, as those described in this extraordinary and extraordinarily compassionate book -- James McConnachie * Sunday Times * A fascinating glimpse into the human condition... a forceful call for society to be more open about such suffering -- Ian Birrell * Daily Mail * An important study of psychosomatic illness, which shows it to be a serious disease of modern society: misunderstood, misdiagnosed and surrounded by fear -- Louise Carpenter * Telegraph * Remarkable Book... Offer[s] a remarkable insight into the suffering of these patients, as well as the power of the mind over the body... It should be on the reading list of every medical student. -- PD Smith * Guardian * A book to start a revolution in healthcare, to make use see what no one has seen so clearly before -- Helen Rumbelow * Times * Honest, fascinating and necessary -- David Aaronovitch * The Times * An extraordinary book... an important one too -- Kathryn Hughes, 5 stars * Mail on Sunday * This vital, engaging book... holds its own with recent bestsellers Do No Harm, the memoir of a neurosurgeon, and The Examined Life, by psychiatrist Stephen Grosz -- Hermione Eyre * Newsweek * It's All in Your Head sits companionably beside Stephen Grosz's The Examined Life... it casts sympathetic light on debilitating conditions that are often medically and socially vilified -- Kate Colquhoun * Sunday Express * A doctor's intriguing look at the puzzling world of psychosomatic illness * Sunday Times *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 128 mm
Thickness: 27 mm
Weight
237 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-09-959785-8 (9780099597858)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
06/2015
1st Edition
Vintage Digital
€10.99
Available for download
Person
Dr Suzanne O'Sullivan has been a consultant in neurology since 2004, first working at The Royal London Hospital and now as a consultant in clinical neurophysiology and neurology at The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, and for a specialist unit based at the Epilepsy Society. She specialises in the investigation of complex epilepsy and also has an active interest in psychogenic disorders. Suzanne's book about psychosomatic illness, It's All in Your Head, won both the Wellcome Book Prize and the Royal Society of Biology Book Prize.