Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance

Mental health advocate Delano chronicles her struggles with mental illness and psychiatric drugs in this thorny and impassioned debut memoir. She describes how her unstable moods and the suffocation she felt as a teen in upper-crust Greenwich, Conn., led her to become “a professional psychiatric patient between the ages of thirteen and twenty-seven.” During those years, Delano was diagnosed with multiple conditions, including bulimia, bipolar disorder, and cutting disorder. As her list of therapies and medications grew, she continued to spiral, culminating in a nearly successful suicide attempt in her 20s. After that episode, she decided to cease treatment, believing that psychotropic drugs like Prozac, Lamictal, and Lexapro were causing her more problems than they were solving. Fourteen years later, Delano is now an advocate for patients with what she calls “chronic pharmaceutical trauma.” She renders difficult episodes from her past with gravity and grace, makes a convincing case that big pharma holds disproportionate lobbying power in contemporary psychiatry, and paints a resonant portrait of a culture devoted to papering over difficult emotions. Still, some readers may balk at her hard-line stances against medication. Though not every argument lands with equal force, this is a potent reconsideration of a pressing social issue. Agent: Liz Parker, Verve Talent & Literary. (Mar.)