Laura Delano, was diagnosed as having bipolar disorder when she was a teenager and would go on to spent 13 years receiving psychiatric care, both as inpatient and outpatient. In the process, she accumulated more and diagnoses, and was given more and more drugs. But as she explains in her new book: Unshrunk – How the mental health industry took over my life and my fight to get it back, published by Monoray, there was a problem, Laura wasn’t getting better.

Despite being a high achieving student for whom it had once appeared a glittering future awaited, her life had fallen apart. She had dropped out of university, was unable to hold down a job and had tried to kill herself.

Then one day Laura had a life-changing epiphany - was it possible that rather than the care and medications she was receiving helping her, might they actually be causing her problems?

Gradually over several years, she weaned herself off all her medication – no easy process given the withdrawal effect of many psychiatric drugs . But the impact was transformative and today Laura has completely turned her life around.

So what went wrong with Laura's care? And why was the medical system unable to recognise how the treatment was making her worse not better?

The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director. You can follow Liz on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at https://liztucker.substack.com

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