Unshrunk

One of Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2025

'Girl, Interrupted for the age of the prescription pill. . . compelling, important, haunting.'
THE NEW YORK TIMES

A really moving and heart-rending story. Unshrunk will help and empower so many people.
JOHANN HARI, author of Stolen Focus and Lost Connections

Unshrunk is the story of a young woman who dared to be herself, and a potent reminder of why human suffering can never be reduced to a diagnostic manual. A must read for anyone probing the dark side of mental health treatment.
ANNA LEMBKE, author of Dopamine Nation

'A wonderful, incisive and deeply moving book. . . provides a rare glimpse behind the curtain of a profession in peril.'
DR JAMES DAVIES, AUTHOR OF CRACKED AND SEDATES

'Inspiring. . . A wake-up call about a deeply flawed system'
PROFESSOR JOANNA MONCRIEFF

In this gripping, essential memoir, Laura Delano takes readers through the labyrinth of the American mental health system, where 'the best available care' left her sicker, more desperate, and more lost than ever before. This beautiful, rageful, joyful book is a beacon for all seeking a life beyond labels, beyond medication, beyond disorder.
JESSICA NORDELL, AUTHOR OF THE END OF BIAS: A BEGINNING

***
I began to think about the forces at play, not just within me, but beyond me. What if my life hadn't fallen apart in the way that it had because of 'treatment-resistant mental illness', as I'd been led to believe, but because of the treatment itself?

At age fourteen, Laura Delano's parents took her to her first psychiatrist. At school, she was the model student, but at home Laura felt an uncontrollable rage that she unleashed on family, friends and herself. She was promptly diagnosed with bipolar disorder and started on a course of mood stabilizers and antidepressants.

It was to mark the beginning of a painful and relentless journey. For the next thirteen years, Laura sought help from the best psychiatrists and hospitals, accumulating an ever-expanding list of diagnoses and prescriptions for nineteen different drugs. She accepted her diagnoses and embraced the pharmaceutical regime she'd been told was necessary to manage her incurable, lifelong disease. But as her symptoms only got more severe and eventually she was deemed 'treatment resistant', Laura began to wonder if the drugs and diagnoses were the cure - or had they become the problem?

Weaving together Laura's medical records and doctors' notes with illuminating research on the drugs she was prescribed, Unshrunk is the powerful memoir of one woman's battle against the commercial psychiatric industry and the role it plays in shaping what it means to be human.