Soye: I feel like we're constantly in western medicine, changing the names of these things. We have to reconceptualize people's understanding of how their environments and their social sort of circumstances and their emotional well being changes their physical well being. Soye: People associate anything prefixed by psycho with some madness or craziness; m they presume that to have a psychostematic disorder, you have to have a psychiatric disorder - which obviously we know isn't the case.
Michael Shermer speaks with award-winning Irish neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan about her work exploring the complexity of psychogenic illness affecting people all around the world. Her book The Sleeping Beauties, documents her investigation of psychosomatic disorders as she traveled the world visiting communities suffering from these so-called mystery illnesses. O’Sullivan records the remarkable stories of syndromes related to her by people from all walks of life. Riveting and often distressing, these case studies — both fascinating and of serious concern — are recounted with compassion and humanity as these syndromes continue to proliferate around the globe.