Laura Delano and Unshrunk are a big deal!

This Psychology Today article is the latest of several extremely high-profile book reviews of Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance by Laura Delano (New York: Viking/Penguin Random House, 2025). Others are from New York Times, and Washington Post. It has been a grand total of two days since Laura's book was published, and already I can't even keep up with all the media attention it's getting.

I met Laura Delano many years ago at a conference in Portland, OR. I've corresponded occasionally with her ever since, and I had pre-ordered Unshrunk, so it was delivered to me the same day it was published. The first couple chapters, along with the media reaction, have already convinced me that this is an extraordinarily important book. Not only that, it's a delightful read despite the serious and socially problematic (perhaps dark) subject it presents.

I could actually predict (and hope) that Unshrunk will have major, lasting cultural impact such as I recall from The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich (circa 1968). That book seemed to more or less inspire the whole modern environmental movement, which had previously just been about Sierra Club-type interests in "conservation". Greenpeace and other radicals since the 1960's had very little in common with the earlier Teddy Roosevelt generation and the national parks crowd, who were a far cry from the SDS or the Black Panther Party.

I'll keep reading and see what I think, but Laura's book may turn out to be the biggest anti-psychiatry event since Jack Nicholson played Randle McMurphy in the 1975 film version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Anyone who doubts the impact of that film only needs to know that almost 1000 results will come up from a search for the title... on the American Psychiatric Association's website (which is not otherwise much about movies).

Judith Warner's Washington Post review asks, with obvious anxiety which she evidently expects her readers to share: "But what if she (Laura Delano) starts giving out life-and-death medical advice? What if that person, who also happens to be supersmart, attractive and compelling, is handed a bullhorn just when her message aligns perfectly with our post-covid, 'D.I.Y health' zeitgeist? What if she publishes a book at the very moment when her anti-expert, anti-science — in this case, anti-psychiatry — perspective aligns with U.S. government policy?"

Laura herself repeatedly claims that she wants little or nothing to do with radicalism. She explicitly denies being anti-psychiatry, or even anti-psychiatric drugs. Are the reviewers who clearly worry about her book afraid? If so, why?

Maybe they should be afraid. Laura Delano is a natural charismatic leader, just a bit like Randle McMurphy (or as I've said before, Mario Savio). She may change people's minds in a big way with her book.

And I say, psychiatria delenda est!