It's All in Your Head

Pauline first became ill when she was 15. 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.

Winner of Wellcome Book Prize 2016

'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.' -- The Sunday Times
'A book to start a revolution in healthcare, to make us see what no one has seen so clearly before.' -- The Times
'A fascinating glimpse into the human condition ... a forceful call for society to be more open about such suffering.' -- The Daily Mail

Suzanne O'Sullivan is an Irish neurologist working in Britain who is the winner of the 2016 Wellcome Book Prize for her first book, It's All in Your Head: True Stories of Imaginary Illness. O'Sullivan is a consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London. Maggie Ollerenshaw is an English actress, best known for playing the role of Mavis in the BBC sitcom series Open All Hours and its spin-off series Still Open All Hours. Her many other television credits include leading roles in Coronation Street, One Foot in the Grave, Midsomer Murders and Wire in the Blood. Her film credits include Britannia Hospital, A Private Function, Pierrepoint and most recently Steven Spielberg's War Horse.

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