People often reach out to me assuming that I’m now happy and high functioning—that I’ve “recovered” or climbed atop some “mentally healthy” pedestal. My first instinct when I hear this, ironically, is to clarify that I’m by no means what psychiatry would consider “well”—though this doesn’t mean anything to me. Instead, I explain how I’ve come to view the paradigm of “mental illness” and “mental health” as a false binary, and that I have found, in shedding this medicalized framework of self-understanding, that no state of being is permanent or anything to be attached to or worried about. And when I do seem to be falling into some kind of particularly unhelpful emotional or thinking “pattern,” I typically don’t need to sleuth around too long to figure out what’s going on. Inevitably, it’s rooted in my relationship to life around me: there is unresolved conflict between me and someone I care about; I have deprioritized social connection because I feel exhausted; I’m powerless about a difficult circumstance but haven’t yet let go of needing it to change; I’m placing too much attention on matters that really have no relevance for me. Much of the time, it’s because I’ve slipped back into my old habit of ignoring my intuition: I’ve spoken yes when my instincts said no. I haven’t had restful time to myself. Too many hours in front of a computer and not enough put toward the things and people that really matter—the things that, when I’m at death’s door one day, I’ll wish I’d done more of: expansive conversations at the reservoir with Cooper with scootering kids in tow, despite all those emails beckoning me to catch up on them; letting the boys blow up the living room to build that pillow fort even though it means more tidying; calling up the people who ignite me to catch up on life instead of just working more.
— Laura Delano, Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance (Viking, March 18, 2025)
Notes:
- Recommended: Not a warm and fuzzy page turner but powerful. Her insights and thoughts will not leave me soon, if ever.
- Book Review of “Unshrunk” by Casey Schwartz, NY Times, March 20, 2025.
- Book Review in Washington Post: “She stopped taking her psych meds. Now she helps others do the same. Laura Delano’s “Unshrunk” is more than a memoir. It’s a treatise against psychiatric medications.”
