Author Laura Delano will discuss her new book, “Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistant,” on Monday, May 12, at 7 pm in our Program Room, Radcliffe Building, Perrot Memorial Library.
Is it possible that psychiatry’s medication-based standard of care is making some people sick? At age fourteen, Laura Delano saw her first psychiatrist. It wouldn’t be her last. At school, Delano earned straight-As, a national squash ranking, and was elected class president; at home, however, the scene was troubling: full of rage and despair, she would lash out at her family, lock herself in her bedroom, and obsess over death. Delano was struggling but not without diagnosis: bipolar disorder, her psychiatrist said, immediately starting her on a mood stabilizer and antidepressant.
For the next thirteen years, Delano lived in the clutch of psychiatry and prescription drugs, seeking treatment from the best psychiatrists and hospitals in the country, accumulating a long list of diagnoses and a cabinet full of medications. Delano had questions about her diagnosis and treatment but, given her struggles and suicidal tendencies, adhered to the pharmaceutical regimen (nineteen different drugs over time) she’d been told was necessary to manage her “incurable, lifelong disease.” When her symptoms only worsened, doctors declared her condition so severe as to be “treatment resistant.”
Demoralized by her circumstances and inability to get well, Delano went back to her lingering questions about her initial and subsequent diagnosis. What if her life was falling apart not despite her treatment, but because of it? After years of faithful patienthood, Delano realized there was one thing she hadn’t tried—leaving behind their prescription drugs and psychiatric diagnoses. This decision would mean unlearning everything experts had told her about her body, mind, and self. It meant exploring in full the terrifying unknowns of an unmedicated life.
Weaving Delano’s long personal struggles with medical records, doctors’ notes, an investigation of modern psychiatry, and research on the drugs she was prescribed, Unshrunk questions the dominant, rarely critiqued role that the American mental health and the pharmaceutical industries play in shaping in our wellness and what it means to be human.
Laura Delano is a writer, speaker, and consultant, and the founder of Inner Compass Initiative, a charitable organization that helps people make informed choices about psychiatric diagnoses, drugs, and drug withdrawal. She is a leading voice in the international movement to offer patients an alternative to the medicalized, professionalized mental health industry. Delano works with individuals and families around the world who are seeking guidance and support during their withdrawal journeys and in their post-psychiatric lives. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and children.
Registration is required. To register, click here.
To reserve a copy of the book from our catalog, click here. To purchase a copy of the book from Athena Books, click here.
For more information, contact Lisa Thomas at 203-637-1066 x20 or lisat@perrotlibrary.org.
