Founder @_innercompass. Author of Unshrunk. Working to build safe off-ramps from the psych med highway.
United States
Joined June 2011
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For decades, those of us speaking about the harms caused by taking and coming off psychiatric drugs have been ignored, denied or dismissed.
I’ve been labeled everything from “antipsychiatry,” “anti-science,” and “Scientologist,” to “right-wing fascist” and “anti-vax,” to simply “too mentally ill” to understand what was happening to me.
Now the APA’s own annual meeting is full of panels on deprescribing, overmedication, withdrawal, and psychiatrists openly admitting they regret not helping patients come off these drugs sooner.
The hundreds of thousands of personal stories of psychiatric iatrogenesis have become impossible to keep waving away as meaningless anecdotes.
I have deep compassion for how hard it must be to face the possibility that you’ve been inadvertently causing harm to patients you’ve been trying to help.
But fear is the master distorter of truth, and the only way out is through.
We are eager to build a big-tent coalition to begin work on these changes we all know are necessary. I hope you’ll join us.
This is a huge step in the right direction. Incredible job to all involved with this essential regulatory reform.
The MHRA is introducing a series of new measures to strengthen how risks associated with antidepressant medicines are communicated to patients, carers and healthcare professionals. Read the full drug safety update here: brnw.ch/21x6qlr
Laura Delano retweeted
World Mental Health Day is observed annually on October 10 to raise awareness, lift the veil of shame that surrounds mental illness and "mobilize support for mental health services." Let us take a look at the field of psychiatry. The worldwide psychiatric pharmaceutical industry's revenue reached $39.08 billion in 2025. By 2031, that number is projected to reach $42.43 billion, driven primarily by antidepressant sales. Have these medications improved our mental health?
Let us consider another question! Could we be well-fed yet malnourished, and if so, could that impact our mental health? We think so! Nutrient deficiencies can easily lead to mental instability. Learn more: Mental Health: Connection To Diet with Sally Fallon Morell: bit.ly/mentalhealthanddiet
Laura Delano @LauraDelano, the author of "Unshrunk," will present on "Beyond Psychiatrization" at our 2026 Wise Traditions conference that starts next week, October 16. You may join us from the comfort of your own home! All the presentations are recorded and available "on demand "and/or as a flash drive, and some are available as live stream. They are on sale up to 44% off until October 16: bit.ly/wisetraditionsrecorde…
Before I was started on psychiatric drugs as a teen, I never had a chance to really unpack what was happening in my environment, and how that was shaping the anger and despair I felt. The conclusion, in next to no time, was that I was sick– something was wrong with my brain.
That’s a fundamental part of the medicalization of human suffering — that it ultimately stems from abnormal brain chemistry.
The framing is “something’s wrong with you,” instead of “something’s happened to you.”
Deep inside me, I already had the answers. I just didn’t have the opportunity to be asked the right questions.
@BlakeMycoskie
Are we really facing a mental health crisis, or an information crisis – one in which millions of people have been told there is a problem in their brain that only a prescription can fix?
I think we are.
And as someone who was first started on psychiatric drugs as a teenager only to then find a life beyond diagnoses and prescriptions, realizing the problem was largely in the information I’d been given, rather than in my brain, changed everything.
@BlakeMycoskie
Laura Delano retweeted
In this episode of the No Magic Pill podcast, host Blake Mycoskie speaks with Laura Delano.
Laura Delano is the founder of Inner Compass Initiative and author of "Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance"
@BlakeMycoskie
@LauraDelano
@_innercompass
Who is Blake Mycoskie and why is the topic of mental health very personal to him?
"Blake Mycoskie built TOMS Shoes into a global brand, gave away 100M shoes to children in need, and sold it for hundreds of millions – yet at the height of his success, he hit rock bottom. After a years-long journey through every therapy and treatment imaginable, Blake is finally talking honestly about the dark side of success and the reality of mental health.
In No Magic Pill, Blake travels the country for raw, honest conversations about mental health with survivors, experts, and cultural icons who've faced the darkness and found a way forward. No quick fixes. No shortcuts. No Magic Pill. Just real talk about the daily choices that lead to lasting mental wellness."
EPISODE DESCRIPTION:
"In this episode of No Magic Pill, Blake Mycoskie sits down with Unshrunk author Laura Delano to explore the question that ultimately changed the course of her life: What if it wasn’t treatment-resistant mental illness? What if the treatment itself was part of the problem?"
#MentalHealth #psychiatry
buff.ly/rHIHFmU
Laura Delano retweeted
This is certainly the most consequential paper published in child and adolescent psychiatry for the last few years. It shows that the meta-analyses that current child psychiatry guidelines rely on to recommend fluoxetine for depression were skewed by an unbelievable trial (n=40) in Iran which found an effect 15 times larger than the average.
When this trial is removed all meta-analyses find the same as a recent Cochrane analysis which found 'small and unimportant differences.'
The flawed meta-analyses by Zhou and @cipriani in the @TheLancet and Lancet Psychiatry need to be corrected.
And guideline committees need to update their guidance in the context of the harms of these drugs including withdrawal effects, sexual effects and agitation/akathisia and suicidality in a minority of youths exposed to them.
Link below
Laura Delano retweeted
“He said I shouldn’t have been taking Klonopin for so long, almost like I’d been writing my own prescriptions for the past nineteen years.”
A powerful account of benzodiazepine withdrawal—and the harm compounded when doctors fail to recognise it. This is just another story which shows why safe tapering and believing patients matters.
Link below
Laura Delano retweeted
In an analysis of drug withdrawal to the FDA adverse effects database here were the signals for the 20 drugs with strongest risk of withdrawal. Paroxetine, duloxetine and venlafaxine where in the top 20. Paroxetine was no. 4, above several opioids.
Laura Delano retweeted
New prospective cohort study published by my group with @markhoro We show that rapidly increasing depressive and anxiety symptoms during antidepressant tapering likely reflect withdrawal reactions - and not relapsing mental disorders.
Open access: karger.com/pps/article/doi/1…
“That’s what we’re learning now: the rate at which you stop the medication can really make a difference as to whether you can do it successfully.”
The psychiatric establishment is finally starting to understand what current and former patients have been educating the public about for decades.
And @HHSGov under @SecKennedy’s leadership is working hard to address it.
Sexuality is not just about sex. Sexuality is our gateway into pleasure and beauty and desire and romance and intimacy and vulnerability. When psychiatric drugs take that from you, they are robbing you of a core aspect of what it means to be human.
I was put on psych drugs before I could even explore those fundamental facets of myself, and it wasn't until my late twenties, off the meds, that I discovered for the first time what they felt like.
I’d been told for years that my inability to feel desire or closeness was a “symptom” of my so-called “mental illness.”
I had no idea what I was missing.
I was lucky, though. I was able to reclaim my capacity to feel pleasure after getting off psych meds. Many people I've heard from over the years have not yet been so lucky. @PSSDNetwork @PSSDInstitute
We’ve taken experiences that are part of being human and turned them into symptoms to treat. It’s a cultural shift @HHSGov and @RobertKennedyJr are now speaking to directly: have we begun medicalizing problems that were never medical to begin with?
Laura Delano retweeted
What an amazing episode and a must-see for everyone in the system or with a loved one in the system…so, everyone.
Laura Delano retweeted
Go to theinnercompass.org and look for our free companion guide before paying anyone
For most of my twenties I wanted to die.
I felt sure death was the only solution to the life the American mental health industry taught me I was sentenced to: one of so-called “treatment-resistant mental illness,” with its psych wards, lifelong pills, and hopeless despair.
It took me a long time to understand that my urge to die was not about dying, but about ending that psychiatrized life.
I just couldn’t then see what that unknown future might look like.
All these years later, I’m so glad I took that leap of faith.
@TheoVon @ThisPastWeeknd
I was two years off psych meds, sitting on my couch, so agitated I wanted to rip my skin off.
I realized at that moment that the freedom I’d been yearning for in the wake of my psychiatrization wasn’t about withdrawing from the prescriptions, themselves, but from the belief that pain is a problem with a quick fix.
@TheoVon @ThisPastWeeknd