Laura Delano

For 14 years, Delano was a “professional mental patient,” as she puts it, after being diagnosed with bipolar disorder when she was a teenager. Now she wonders whether the dominant, medicalized approach to mental illness is actually making us as a society sicker.

Laura Delano speaks to BBC presenter Julian Worricker about her experiences of the mental health industry and leaving it. The latter half of the program features Dr Mark Horowitz, the co-author of the Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines.

Panellists: Laura Delano, Executive Director of Inner Compass Initiative, former psychiatric patient will facilitate the discussion; Dr. David Cohen- a professor of social welfare at UCLA who studies adverse effects of psychotropic drugs, involuntary psychiatric detentions, the history of mental health interventions, and the cultural spread of ignorance; Mark Horowitz, UK-based training psychiatrist and academic who learnt about the difficulty of coming off psychotropic medications first hand and is now trying to spread understanding of how to safely deprescribe and prescribe these medications; Angela Peacock, MSW, former Army Sergeant and subject of the film.

Laura Delano shares what it was like to be diagnosed "mentally ill" as a teenager and how she found life beyond labels by learning to be with her emotional pain.

Millions of Americans have taken antidepressants for many years. What happens when it's time to stop?

In this talk, Laura Delano explores what “recovery” has meant for her on her journey through the mental health system. She reflects on what it was like to be diagnosed “bipolar” and seek help from the mental health system over thefollowing fourteen years.

Laura Delano talks about grieving the loss of fourteen years to psychiatric labels and psychotropic drugs, and how she reclaimed her life. Along the way, she offers tips and suggestions for those in their own process of grieving loss to Psychiatry. Find more at www.RecoveringfromPsychiatry.com

Laura Delano offers tips, suggestions, and hope for those in psychiatric drug withdrawal from ex-patient Laura Delano.

Laura Delano explores life, death, and suicide from the perspective of suicide attempt survivor and ex-"Bipolar" patient, Laura Delano.

ex-"Bipolar" patient Laura Delano discusses the impact that psychiatric diagnosis had on her life, and the broader implications we face from the medicalization of human experience.