Over the course of 14 years, Laura Delano was diagnosed with 8 different psychiatric disorders. For their treatment, she was prescribed 21 different psychiatric drugs.
In her thought-provoking memoir, Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance (Viking Books, March 2025), Delano upends conventional wisdom about psychiatric diagnosis. She presents a compelling argument that psychiatric diagnoses and their associated treatments may be mostly arbitrary, flawed, and subjective, despite the premise of the DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) that they are based on hard scientific evidence.
In my full review at Psychology Today, I provide a more in-depth examination of the book’s central themes—they include overdiagnosis, error, overtreatment, and their wider significance for psychiatry and treatment practices today. I invite you to read my review and to join the conversation on this timely and important book.