On Recovering from Psychiatric Labels and Psychotropic Medications: An ‘Occupy APA’ manifesto

Laura Delano is a blogger at Mad in America, her blog is called, JOURNEYING BACK TO SELF

Laura Delano graduated in 2006 from Harvard University, where she studied Social, Medical, and Psychiatric Anthropology. Her thesis, Psycho-pharmaceuticals and Selfhood: Negotiating Identity as a Consumer of Mood Disorder Medications, explored the ways in which individuals living with a psychiatric diagnosis and taking psychotropic medications construct a sense of self and negotiate agency. Initially diagnosed with and medicated for major depression at the age of fourteen and re-diagnosed with bipolar disorder at the age of eighteen, Laura tapered off of her last psychotropic medication in September 2010 at age twenty-seven and no longer lives with a psychiatric diagnosis. She works today as a Peer Specialist in the mental health system, and also writes a blog for the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care. She can be reached by email at lfdelano@gmail.com, or on Twitter @LauraDelano.

Robert Whitaker’s note: In this blog, Laura Delano is telling her story of being diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder at age 14, and how that has affected her life ever since. She is telling her story chapter by chapter, and so readers new to her blog might want to read her story from its beginning.