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An Overdiagnosis Epidemic Is Harming Patients’ Mental Health
Diagnosing patients when there aren’t effective treatments to give them can make their symptoms worse, argues neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan.
Neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan thinks that modern health care is overdiagnosing people but not necessarily making them healthier—and in fact, that it might be doing more harm than good. For instance, between 1998 and 2018, autism diagnoses jumped by 787 percent in the UK alone; Lyme disease has an estimated 85 percent overdiagnosis rate, including in countries where it’s impossible to contract the disease; and there’s still little evidence that many cancer screening programs actually reduce cancer-related death rates. That was probably true to a point, but the improvement isn’t sustained when you get into the milder end of any disease spectrum.
Or read this on Wired
