Hosted by Will Hall.

Today's guest is Laura Delano. She graduated in 2006 from Harvard University, where she studied Social, Medical, and Psychiatric Anthropology. Her thesis,Psycho-pharmaceuticals and Selfhood: Negotiating Identity as a Consumer of Mood Disorder Medications, explored the ways in which individuals living with a psychiatric diagnosis and taking psychotropic medications construct a sense of self and negotiate agency. Initially diagnosed with and medicated for major depression at the age of fourteen and re-diagnosed with bipolar disorder at the age of eighteen, Laura tapered off of her last psychotropic medication in September 2010 at age twenty-seven and no longer lives with a psychiatric diagnosis.  She works today as a Peer Specialist in the mental health system, and also writes a blog for the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care.