Leading a Movement Away from Psychiatric Medication

March 17, 2025

a mix of various types of pills

(New York Times) – Ms. Delano is not a doctor; her main qualification, she likes to say, is having been “a professional psychiatric patient between the ages of 13 and 27.” During those years, when she attended Harvard and was a nationally ranked squash player, she was prescribed 19 psychiatric medications, often in combinations of three or four at a time.

Then Ms. Delano decided to walk away from psychiatric care altogether, a journey she detailed in a new memoir, “Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance.” Fourteen years after taking her last psychotropic drug, Ms. Delano projects a radiant good health that also serves as her argument — living proof that, all along, her psychiatrists were wrong.

Since then, to the alarm of some physicians, an online DIY subculture focused on quitting psychiatric medications has expanded and begun to mature into a service industry. (Read More)