O'Sullivan completed an MA in creative writing at Birkbeck College,[2] University of London, in 2015, for which she received a distinction.
It explores the mind-body connection through stories of O’Sullivan's patients, and looks compassionately at the serious medical problems that can arise through pure psychological mechanisms.
Camilla, a lawyer, cannot face the horror of what has caused her seizures Brainstorm: The Detective Stories from the World of Neurology is O'Sullivan's second book, published in 2018 by Chatto & Windus.
It features schoolgirls in Colombia caught up in an outbreak of contagious seizures, Kazakhstani townspeople fallen foul of contagious sleeping sickness, sonic weapon attacks, attacks of ‘crazy sickness’ affecting indigenous people of Nicaragua, and a Tourette's like syndrome spreading through a New York high school.
Winner of the Royal Society of Biology[13] General Book Prize for It's All in Your Head: True Stories of Imaginary Illness.
Shortlisted for the Books Are My Bag readers award 2016 for It's All in Your Head [9] Winner of the AITO Travel Writer of the Year in 2018 for her piece entitled ‘Going off the grid on Indonesia’s forgotten islands’ published in the Telegraph magazine.
[14] Shortlisted for the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize[15] in 2021 for The Sleeping Beauties: And Other Stories of Mystery Illness.