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Unshrunk and Other Coverage of the Mental Health Industrial Complex (posted 04/14/25)
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WARNING: Rapidly changing psych med dosage (up or down) can be a difficult and dangerous process leading to suicide, homicide, or psychosis. BE CAREFUL! Get expert help. Research thoroughly. Carefully review package inserts for any medicine you take.
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The failure of the mental health industrial complex to truly help people matches other areas of “traditional” medical failures.
“The more I suffered, the more medical treatments I was convinced I needed, but the more treatments I received, the more I suffered.” — Laura Delano, former psychiatric patient
Psychiatry has proven as harmful to those with mental health issues, just as conventional medicine has.
Below are related articles for those who are experiencing mental health issues themselves or are trying to help friends and family through the mental health maze.
Common threads:
A pill or injection for every ill or infection!
Disregard for the body’s ability to heal with just a little help from its friends (sleep, exercise, nutrition, vitamins, clean air, clean water).
Algorithmic medicine. Computers and AI are now the doctors.
Poor medical training with emphasis on irrelevant issues (yes, DEI).
Patients and doctors aren’t in charge. Insurance companies, big pharma, and big government are.
Failure to look at the patient in the room. Instead, computer screens and bureaucratically set “standards of care” guide medical procedures.
Failure to look for and find root causes of illness and suffering.
Failure to think “outside the box” and search for emotional/spiritual and natural solutions to patient care.
MONEY, POWER, and BUREAUCRACY in control.
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Leading a Movement Away from Psychiatric Medication. By Ellen Barry (03/17/25)
Laura Delano walked away from the treatments that defined her teens and 20s. Now, she’s hoping to create a road map for others to follow.
Fourteen years after taking her last psychotropic drug, Ms. Delano projects a radiant good health that proves her psychiatrists were wrong.
Now she offers coaching to individual paying clients. And, through Inner Compass Initiative, the nonprofit she runs with her husband, Cooper Davis, she hopes to provide support to a large swath of people interested in reducing or quitting psychiatric medications.
This article from New York Times highlights Laura Delano’s new memoir, “Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance.” It also describes:
Delano’s long journey from psychiatric drug dependence to health;
Case studies of those who want to wean off psych meds but need coaching to help with the difficult and dangerous process;
History and successes of peer counseling;
Work of the Inner Compass Imitative;
Legislative efforts to shine the light on mental health.
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"Unshrunk". A story of psychiatric treatment resistance. By Robert W Malone MD, MS (04/09/25)
Dr. Malone also reviews Laura Delano’s memoir from a more personal perspective, that of his wife Jill Malone and her family. He begins:
In December, Jill and I had the pleasure of spending time with Laura Delano, author of “Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Resistance,” at a Brownstone Institute retreat. This book is a fascinating memoir about her journey as a long-term patient in the mental health industry, which led to Laura taking on the mental health-industrial complex in this fascinating book.
Laura’s journey touched a nerve for Jill. See, Jill grew up in a family profoundly damaged by the long arm of the mental health establishment of the 1950s through 1970s. This was because her sister had been diagnosed as being profoundly mentally ill long before Jill was born.
Dr. Malone weaves a review of Delano’s book and journey with the struggles Jill Malone’s family had as they battled her sister Christine’s (misdiagnosed, mistreated) mental illness. Ultimately, like Laura Delano, Jill’s sister broke free of the psychiatric drugs and lived a happier life drug free. Unfortunately, she later died of lung cancer around age fifty-two after a lifetime of smoking cigarettes that doctors had prescribed for her as treatment while she was a teenager.
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A Midwestern Doctor’s Articles on the Dangers of Psychotropic Medicines
A Midwestern Doctor (AMD) has written many articles on psychiatry and the dangerous drugs typically prescribed for mental health conditions (e.g., SSRIs, SNRIs, antidepressants, anti-anxiety, benzodiazepines, Prozac, Ritalin, and more). AMD also offers suggestions for quitting them safely.
Psychiatry section of AMD’s Index: tinyurl.com/5atvt62y
Search for “antidepressant”: tinyurl.com/2a4a8c4t
Search for “anxiety”: tinyurl.com/w4wn39xy
Note: Above searches above will return overlapping articles. To do a general search of this amazing Substack, click the following link, then type the term you’re looking for:
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The Mental Health Industry Is Incentivized to Keep Patients Medicated: Cooper Davis. American Thought Leaders (01/28/25, podcast / video 50:54)
An excellent interview between host Jan Jekielek and Cooper Davis.
Podcast: tinyurl.com/yzudddw9
Video (includes transcript, may require subscription): tinyurl.com/mpt8xdyp
Edited from Show Notes:
Cooper Davis was diagnosed at a young age with ADHD and prescribed a low dose of Ritalin, which helped him focus but caused unwanted side effects. To counteract these effects, he was prescribed other medications. By age 30, Davis was dependent on a “prescription cascade” of six different psychiatric drugs at any given time.
Today, free of psychotropic drugs, Davis is executive director of the Inner Compass Initiative, where he addresses America’s mental health crisis and overmedication by helping people make informed choices about prescription drugs, diagnoses, and withdrawal.
Key quotes from Cooper Davis:
It’s complicated enough that the scientific consensus will generally say, ‘We don’t quite understand why these drugs work.
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Once people experience withdrawal symptoms, they get back on the drug. They treat it as confirmation that they are still mentally ill.
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Experiential expertise, expertise gained from your own life, is just as valid—and probably more useful in many, many cases than clinical expertise.
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Davis explains: One out of four adults in America and 6 million children are currently taking at least one psychiatric drug.
That’s going to be inclusive of teenagers, but it is certainly the trend that more and more kids that are younger and younger are being diagnosed and prescribed earlier and earlier.
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From methylene blue and psychiatric drugs to pure evil. By psychiatrist Dr. Peter Breggin MD & Ginger Breggin. Interview with Dr. Lee Vliet (04/04/25, podcast )
To get a sense of all the potential adverse effects of methylene, just look up all the adverse effects of all the antidepressants, all the stimulants, all the antipsychotic drugs, and the main anti-Parkinsonian drugs. Methylene blue is a witch’s brew of neurotoxins. It jacks up the output of serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine in the brain, and eventually, the brain will react by jacking down all three neurotransmitters. That’s probably worse than most witch’s brews.
This conversation between the Breggins and Truth for Health Foundation’s Dr. Lee Vliet ranges from dangers of methylene blue to deeper evils driving modern psychiatry and public health.
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Related interviews (selected list)
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Breggin exposes establishment, says spiritual solutions often ignored in favor of psychiatric drugs. Hosts: Peter Breggin MD & Ginger Breggin. Guest: Alex Newman (04/17/25, video 28:32)
Psychiatry has long been a means of abusive social and behavioral control. More than 80% of the population is treated with psychiatric drug prescriptions over a lifetime, impacting socioeconomic functioning.
Antidepressants, among the most frequently prescribed psychotropic drugs, cause adverse effects and poor outcomes. Dangerous antipsychotic drugs are another debilitating “treatment.”
Dr. Breggin and Liberty Sentinel’s president, Alex Newman, discuss better approaches.
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“Madness and Medicine” 1977 ABC TV documentary suppressed and locked away for decades. Peter Breggin MD & Ginger Breggin (02/21/25, video 52:22): tinyurl.com/yc5c4kuu
Long suppressed interviews with psychiatrists, former medical patients, and other medical specialists about psychiatric abuse of people in emotional crisis, condition of mental hospitals, and brutal psychiatric “treatments” including electroshock and psychosurgery (the physical destruction of healthy brain tissue.)
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Additional References:
Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance (learn about and purchase book): tinyurl.com/tracd7ck
Inner Compass Initiative: tinyurl.com/nhb6rf3f
Suicide Crisis Information:
Call or text 988 to reach 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline
More resources from Speaking of Suicide: tinyurl.com/46utret8
Truth for Health Foundation: tinyurl.com/bddx53kd
Mission:
Provide information and updates on prevention and treatment of common medical conditions, including COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.
Present faith-based integrated approaches to medical treatment, health and healing: physical, psychological/emotional, spiritual, social and environmental.
Advocate and provide legal defense of basic human and civil rights.
Dr. Peter & Ginger Breggin on America Out Loud: tinyurl.com/45muhnb2
