a chronicle of psychiatric harm
Bitter Pill by Rachel Aviv
The New Yorker, April 8, 2019
This significant article chronicles the life of a young woman who was given multiple psychiatric diagnoses by some of the "best" psychiatrists in the country. She was placed on almost every imaginable psychiatric medicine that appear to have done her great harm. It's a cautionary tale that is well worth a close reading. The article is quite long and rambles a bit but much in it of teaching value. Charles Medawar covered a lot of this in his book, name, around 20 years ago!1,2 But who paid attention?
The protagonist of “Bitter Pill” is Laura Delano, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder shortly before she entered Harvard as a freshman in 2001. She saw psychiatrists at McLean Hospital in Belmont Massachusetts. There she was initially placed on Prozac, Provigil and Ambien.
Here is a moving lecture by Laura Delano.