In this episode of the Veriditas Podcast, host Dr. Petra Bueskens interviews Laura Delano, author of ‘Unshrunk’, a memoir that critiques the psychiatric industrial complex. They delve into the impact of psychiatric diagnosis and medication on personal identity and discuss the challenges of navigating away from a medicalized understanding of mental health. Laura shares her journey from being diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age 14 to rejecting psychiatric treatment and finding a life full of meaning and vitality. The episode also touches on themes of informed choice, the cultural construction of mental health, and the importance of reconnecting with one’s instincts and community.

00:00 Reconnecting After a Long Time

00:45 Reflecting on the Conference Experience

02:36 The Impact of Public Appearances

04:23 The Struggles of Being a Dissident

05:23 Officially Starting the Interview

06:16 Laura’s Early Life and Pressures

31:39 The Diagnosis and Its Impact

49:21 The Whack-a-Mole Analogy

50:33 Life at Harvard and Decline

53:09 The Hopelessness of Treatment Resistance

55:23 Complicity in the Medical Model

58:32 Rehumanizing Society and Personal Healing

01:00:55 Therapy and the Individual Therapist

01:06:00 Critique of the Medicalized Mental Health Industry

01:15:37 The Power of Asking Questions

01:18:53 Transcendence and Personal Growth

01:30:50 Final Thoughts and Reflections

References

Laura Delano, Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance, Viking, 2025: https://unshrunkthebook.com/

Laura’s website: https://www.lauradelano.com/

Articles on Laura

May 15th, 2025— The Wall Street Journal— ‘Unshrunk’ Review: The Toll of the Treatment

April 21st, 2025— Daily Mail— “I almost ended my life at 25 because of the cocktail of anti-depressant drugs I had been put on from the age of 14”

March 28th, 2025— CounterPunch— “Unshrunk: A Memoir That Upsets the NYT and Which Freethinkers Will Love”

May 18th, 2025— Psychology Today— “Navigating Mental Health Without Drugs”

March 17th, 2025— The New York Times— “The Ex-Patients Club”

March 17th, 2025— Psychology Today— “Diagnosis Cascade: A Book Review”

April 8th, 2019 issue— The New Yorker — “The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs” under the ‘American Chronicles’ headline

March 20, 2025 – The Washington Post  – “She stopped taking her psych meds. Now she helps others do the same”

Laura on Tucker Carlson: “Laura Delano: How Big Pharma Created the Mental Health Crisis”

Ivan Illich’s definition of “iatrogenesis”,

“… iatrogenesis was a centrepiece of his ideology, and he defined it at three levels. Clinical iatrogenesis was the injury done to patients by ineffective, toxic, and unsafe treatments that he listed in extensive footnotes. He described the need for evidence-based medicine 20 years before the term was coined. Social iatrogenesis resulted from the medicalisation of life. More and more problems were seen as amenable to medical intervention, with pharmaceutical companies developing expensive treatments for what he described as non-diseases. His most biting words were cultural iatrogenesis, the destruction of traditional ways of dealing with, and making sense of, death, pain, and sickness. He used the medical profes-sion’s own statistics to argue that many of the diseases over which doctors claimed victory were on their way out in the natural rhythm of things.” Obituary, Ivan Illich, THE LANCET, Vol 361, January 11, 2003.

Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, Obstetric Violence and Birth Trauma.

A conversation could change a life | RU OK?

Jimena Escoto, “Masterpiece Story: The Reluctant Bride by Auguste Toulmouche”, Daily Art Magazine, 19 March 2024.

Key texts:

Ivan Illich, Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health, Pantheon Books, New York, 1976.

Richard Brown, Rockefeller Medicine Men: Rockefeller Medicine Men – Medicine and Capitalism in America, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980

Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception, 1963.

R.D. Laing, The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness, Penguin, 1960.

Thomas Szasz, The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct, Hoeber-Harper, 1961.

Robert Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, Crown, 2010.

Peter Breggin, Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal: A Guide for Prescribers, Therapists, Patients and their Families, Springer Publishing, 2012.

Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth about Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives, Harper Wave, 2016.

Daniel Mackler, Six Reasons Why I Quit Being a Therapist, January 5, 2018.

Barbara Ehrenreich, Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America, Picador, 2009.

Academic articles:

Samuel K Teague and Peter Robinson, “The History of Unreason: Social Construction of Mental Illness” in Jennifer M. Martin (Ed.), Mental Health Policy, Practice, and Service Accessibility in Contemporary Society, IGI Global, 2018, pp.1-19.DOI: https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-7402-6.ch001

Stahnisch FW, Verhoef M, “The Flexner report of 1910 and its impact on complementary and alternative medicine and psychiatry in North America in the 20th century”, Evidence Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Vol. 2012, issue 1; Article ID 647896. https://doi.org/10.1155/2012/647896

Beeker T, Mills C, Bhugra D, Te Meerman S, Thoma S, Heinze M, von Peter S. “Psychiatrization of Society: A Conceptual Framework and Call for Transdisciplinary Research”, Frontiers in Psychiatry 2021 Jun 4; vol. 12, article 645556. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2021.645556

Gray DP, Dineen M, Sidaway-Lee K. “The worried well”. Br J Gen Pract. 2020 Jan 22;70(691):84–85. doi: 10.3399/bjgp20X708017