Nineteen Meds Later: Rethinking Mental Healthcare | Laura Delano - E448

About this episode

Laura Delano was a high-achieving student—straight-A's, national squash ranking, class president—whose private suffering led to an early bipolar diagnosis and a lifetime prognosis of medication. After initially resisting, she spent the next decade immersed in elite psychiatric care, accumulating multiple diagnoses and nineteen medications, only to worsen and be labeled "treatment resistant." Following a suicide attempt at twenty-seven, Laura began asking a forbidden question: what if the treatment itself was the problem? Choosing to leave behind drugs and diagnoses, she became an outspoken ex-patient, writer, and advocate—working with individuals, families, and clinicians to address…