America in the Age of Diagnosis

Plain English with Derek Thompson

The Ringer

News Commentary, News

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 9 September 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	As the 21st century was getting underway, Hollywood released a series of films that were daring, entertaining, and absolutely unmissable.
0:09.0	Films like, 25th Hour, Bring It On, Zodiac, and No Country for Old Men.
0:15.0	They arrived during the George W. Bush era, a chaotic time in America.
0:19.0	Think 9-11, Katrina, the mortgage crisis. After the Bush era, a chaotic time in America. Think 9-11, Katrina, the mortgage crisis. After the Bush
0:24.5	years, the country would never be the same, and neither would Hollywood. I'm Brian Raftery,
0:31.9	and in my new limited series, Mission Accomplished, we're going to dive into some of the biggest
0:35.9	movies of the Bush years, and look at what they said about the state of the nation.
0:39.3	We'll go behind the scenes with filmmakers and experts
0:42.3	and relive some of your favorite movies from the early 2000s,
0:45.3	from Donnie Darko to Michael Clayton, from Anchorman to Iron Man.
0:49.3	So slip on your sketchers, dig out your old Nokia,
0:52.3	and join me from Mission Accomplished, starting August 12th on the big picture feet.
1:02.5	Today, sickness and identity in the age of diagnosis.
1:12.0	I've been thinking a lot recently about health and language, the illnesses we have and the words we use to describe them.
1:19.9	Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been fixated for decades on the rise of autism in America.
1:24.8	Since becoming health secretary, he's made it a priority to discover the environmental
1:28.9	causes behind autism, which by one account has grown nearly 60-fold since the 1990s. This increase
1:36.4	in autism could be the result of several things. It could be a real epidemic caused by vaccines
1:42.2	or environmental factors, the chemicals and our food and drugs.
1:46.1	This is the bet that Kennedy himself is making.
1:48.5	Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Kennedy is set to release a report that suggests
1:53.4	a link between Tylenol use during pregnancy and autism.
	...

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