Book Review: Unshrunk by Laura Delano
It is rare in my line of work to come across a client who has not been diagnosed with a mental illness and prescribed medication. Some cases are more memorable than others: there are the two clients diagnosed with schizophrenia who abruptly stopped taking their medication and within days committed heinous murders; and the client who was evaluated at the same time by a pair of psychiatrists, but their respective diagnoses were wildly different.
The cases that keep me up at night, though, are the children I read about who are prescribed powerful medications to treat their delinquent behaviors. In so many of those cases, it appears like the meds are just making matters worse.
So when I heard an interview of Laura Delano about her book, Unshrunk, I knew I had to read it. It was one of the best books I have read in a long time.
At age 13, Delano began therapy after she told her parents she wanted to move away and start over because she could not handle the stress she was feeling. Delano also began drinking. Delano’s therapist sent her to a psychiatrist, where after only an hour Delano was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The psychiatrist prescribed Depakote and Prozac.
This began Delano’s 14-year-long journey with psychopharmaceuticals. Depakote. Prozac. Seroquel. Ambien. Provigil. Lithium.
Her mental health only deteriorated more. When she expressed concern to her therapist, she was labeled “treatment-resistant.” It was not that the drugs were ineffective or even harmful; she must be the problem.
The climax of the book was the chapter where Delano relives her attempted suicide. I have read a lot of articles about suicide and reviewed psychiatric records detailing a client’s prior suicide attempt. But this was different.
Delano had spent the first part of the book letting the reader get to know her. Every high. Every low. Every setback. So when she attempts suicide, it is as if you are there with her, almost in her thoughts while it is happening.
Fortunately, Delano survived. But now the treatment plan was more treatment, meaning higher doses of meds. This is when Delano commits to becoming sober. Through her sobriety, she regained some clarity. She stumbled upon Robert Whitaker’s Anatomy of an Epidemic and began questioning whether the “treatment” was actually the problem.
As she became more convinced that it was, she grieved for the person she could have been without the meds. She began to taper her meds, and she described how painful the process was. But she remained committed and slowly found herself. She eventually ended treatment altogether and ended her use of all meds.
The last part of the book is Delano’s journey back to herself and her realization that she could find meaning in her 14-year-long period of suffering to help others experiencing the same pain.
As someone who practices criminal defense, it is rare for me to have a client who has not been through the mental health system at some point. As a practitioner you see the litany of diagnoses and medications prescribed, and you see the continued decline. This is particularly true with the child clients. They experience some type of trauma or act out in some way, they are diagnosed with a mental illness, and they begin what feels like the never-ending journey of meds, more meds, and different meds.
When one asks whether, perhaps, the treatment is making things worse, the response is always the same: the person’s condition would be so much worse without the meds. It is impossible to know if that is true.
But Delano’s book certainly suggests otherwise. It is a sad yet eternally hopeful story of Delano’s intense struggle through the mental health system. I highly recommend it!