How I Overcame “Treatment-Resistant” Mental Illness: Laura Delano’s Journey
Can you safely taper off psychiatric medications? And what are the potential harms of long-term psychiatric care?
Laura Delano spent years as a professional patient, navigating psychiatric diagnoses, multiple medications, and a life defined by treatment.
In this interview, Laura discusses her 13-year experience as a psychiatric patient, the impact of long-term medication use, and how she took back control of her health to successfully taper off multiple psychiatric drugs.
After receiving unsafe advice to taper too quickly, Laura suffered terrible withdrawal. Ultimately, she learned about safe tapering protocols, which she now shares with others. Through her nonprofit, Inner Compass Initiative, she’s empowering people to make informed choices about psychiatric medications and de-prescription.
💡 In this episode, we cover:
✅ Laura’s personal story of polypharmacy and its effects
✅ The impact of long-term psychiatric medication
✅ The challenges of tapering and withdrawal
✅ How Laura has rebuilt her life beyond medications
✅ How Laura built a nonprofit to support others on the same path
✅ The role of diet, lifestyle, and community in mental health recovery
✅ Why informed consent is crucial for psychiatric treatment decisions
✅ The mission of Inner Compass Initiative
A new path for many hoping to ease the burden of tapering off meds could be ketogenic therapy, which many are using to safely reduce or even eliminate psychiatric medications. More research is needed, but many anecdotal reports offer hope.
Laura’s new book _Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance_ is available March 18, 2025.
⚠️ Trigger Warning: This conversation includes discussion of suicidality and a suicide attempt. Please take care when watching.
#MentalHealth #Psychiatry #Deprescribing #PsychiatricMedication #Tapering #MetabolicPsychiatry
*Expert Featured:*
Laura Delano
https://x.com/LauraDelano
IG: @_lauradelano_
Website: https://www.lauradelano.com/
*Resources Mentioned:*
Inner Compass Initiative
– https://www.theinnercompass.org/
Laura’a New Book: _Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance_
– https://unshrunkthebook.com/
The Challenges of Going off Psychiatric Drugs
– https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-challenge-of-going-off-psychiatric-drugs
*CMEs Mentioned:*
_Managing Major Mental Illness with Dietary Change: The New Science of Hope_
– https://www.mycme.com/courses/managing-major-mental-illness-with-dietary-change-9616
_Brain Energy: The Metabolic Theory of Mental Illness_
– https://www.mycme.com/courses/brain-energy-the-metabolic-theory-of-mental-illness-9615
Follow our channel for more information and education from Bret Scher, MD, FACC, including interviews with leading experts in Metabolic Psychiatry.
Learn more about metabolic psychiatry and find helpful resources at https://metabolicmind.org/
*About us:*
Metabolic Mind is a non-profit initiative of Baszucki Group working to transform the study and treatment of mental disorders by exploring the connection between metabolism and brain health. We leverage the science of metabolic psychiatry and personal stories to offer education, community, and hope to people struggling with mental health challenges and those who care for them.
Our channel is for informational purposes only. We are not providing individual or group medical or healthcare advice nor establishing a provider-patient relationship. Many of the interventions we discuss can have dramatic or potentially dangerous effects if done without proper supervision. Consult your healthcare provider before changing your lifestyle or medications.
*Timestamps:*
0:00 – Introduction to Laura Delano and deprescribing medications. Laura’s powerful story.
10:31 – What was Laura’s mindset when she was told her mental illness was “treatment-resistant?” What could have been done differently with Laura’s treatment in her youth to improve her outcomes at the time?
16:30 – What was Laura’s experience with treatment? How did Laura Delano change her treatment to improve her mental illness? How did deprescribing affect her mental health?
26:00 – What was Laura Delano’s recovery like?
31:10 – What is Laura Delano doing to spread awareness of her journey to help others? What has she learned from doing this work? How should people taper psychiatric medication?
39:23 – What advice does she have for people working with care team to deprescribe?
44:33 – Can a ketogenic diet and other metabolic interventions make it easier to come off psychiatric medications?
50:24 – Where can people find more from Laura Delano, her book and Inner Compass Initiative?
20 Comments
DOCTORS WILL NEVER SUPPORT THE PATIENT WHO WANT TO COME OFF THESE DRUGS they dont want to support us doctors are brainwashed or educated to pescribe these drugs from hell for life, so whats the point with this story. Love the story though.
MENTAL PATIENTS WANT MORE THAN A CRAPPY LIFE AT THE HANDS OF DOCTORS
In order to come off the drugs you have to have a doctor willing to sell you the drugs neccesary to do the tapering, and they refuse to prescribe drugs to that end.
This is why people do not like working with me….i see people. I let my persons served know they have rights, they can say no and they do have a feature!!!!!!!!!!!
I never had anxiety until AFTER I was on the drugs. The horrible thing is that when the doctors think it's time to take you off, very few will taper you. Mine just said to me that she was going to stop my prescription. Good thing I had hoarded some and was starting the taper anyway!!
I had a friend who I felt was on way too many meds but when I said so people criticized me. I wanted her to see your work and sent her info on you but she chose to end her life about a month ago. I've been mourning a wonderful person who left us too soon.
Unless For some legal reason, warning people that there is triggering suicidal content can actually enhance the trigger. Trigger warnings, precipitate and enhance the triggered
Enlightening! TY
that might as well be me speaking but i never went to school and know im going to sue them myself pro se…they picked the wrong one..if u want the story keep in contact, thanks to laura..
How brave you are to stand up !
God bless you Laura…
I will keep you in prayer…
thousands of miles from you …
in Malaysia SEAsia!
Btw..
I am a 25yrs stomach CA survivor
at 70 today
Some of these people who treat people are crazier than their patients!
Did she get this diagnosis removed!? I too was misdiagnosed recently and I’d like to have this removed.
So how did she actually get better? By getting off meds? Nothing else? It just looks like she’s seeking attention by going on every podcast.
Thank you so much ❤ you inspired me a lot to get back to keto to treat bipolar type 2, I was doing amazing, I even hit 0.5 gki as I was doing it for thyroid cancer treatment, I stopped being on ketosis because I wanted to get shredded so I started to focus more on that 😢 now I don't even exercise, bipolar has came back, my thyroid nodule is growing 😢 I really need to get back to keto no matter what ❤ thank you so much for your work metabolic mind ♥️
I had an acquaintance years ago that was a meth dealer. Made a very lucrative living and he didn’t want his users coming off the drug either.
This is dangerous to encourage this so strongly on youtube. Paranoid schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorders are real. Schizophrenics get on the right meds and are able to function and videos like this encourage them to get off their meds and they end up with disorderly conduct arrest and thrown in jail and traumatized ending up homeless for years until they get back on their antipsychotics so they can function again. There are not enough beds or clinics to help seriously psychotic individuals so the parents are leaned on to scrape their kids off the street and get them back on track. Just to have them come upon videos like this to start the whole taper off their meds, jail, homeless, scrape them up, back on meds and functioning cycle. What do you want from people? Fix the hospital system so people can rest and take a break to heal. Seriously psychotic schizophrenics should not be encouraged to taper off their meds without tapering onto another medication. How many mothers, fathers and families have to be killed by their schizophrenic family members before people are going to support mental hospitals. Mental hospitals are just taking criminally insane now and schizophrenics fall through the cracks.
""It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."—Upton Sinclair
It's so heartbreaking the abuse of power, and now claimed ignorance, the psych industries have been participating in, during the last several decades. For one thing, their DSM "bible" was debunked in 2013, by the head of the NIMH … but they haven't yet burned it?
As pointed out in Robert Whitaker's 'Anatomy of an Epidemic,' the antidepressants and ADHD drugs can create the bipolar symptoms. And as a long time psycho pharmaceutical researcher, I will point out the fact that both the antidepressants and antipsychotics are also known as anticholinergic drugs. And the anticholinergic drugs, especially when combined, can create the positive symptoms of schizophrenia, via anticholinergic toxidrome. I eventually also found the medical evidence that the antipsychotics (aka neuroleptics) can create the negative symptoms of schizophrenia, via neuroleptic induced deficit syndrome.
Benzo! Bingo. That's a RED flag. I'm almost 10 yrs out from Benzos, still a soul-crushing ordeal. I am a proper trainwreck.