Side Effects

From quirky to serious, trends in psychology and psychiatry.

Christopher Lane is the Pearce Miller Research Professor of Literature at Northwestern University and the author of Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness. See full bio

June 8, 2009

England, My England

"Obama's America is good for you," British journalists are noting with envy, while their own political culture seems "self-loathing, curdled, introspective, hopeless and small."

"For eight years," a columnist at the London Times explains, Brits "could, in equal measure, mock and pity America. Not any more." Read More

June 3, 2009

The Slippery Slope of Bitterness Disorder and Other Psychiatric Diagnoses

I'm happy to debate with fellow PT blogger Stephen Diamond whether bitterness should become a mental disorder. He says yes emphatically; I say no at all costs. How to breach that divide? Well, first we must establish when "justifiable" bitterness turns into a pathology. And that's where the trouble begins and the water starts to muddy.

May 28, 2009

Bitterness: The Next Mental Disorder?

At its convention last week, the American Psychiatric Association convened a panel on whether to include "Post-traumatic Embitterment Disorder" in the next edition of its diagnostic bible, the DSM. Count me among the afflicted, if you must, but do we really want the DSM, of all documents, legislating what is reasonable bitterness and what is not? How could the manual even begin to draw a meaningful line between the two? Read More

May 21, 2009

Policing with Inappropriate Force

An "adrenaline dump": That's the explanation police in Evanston, Illinois are giving for why three officers in this quiet university town pumped 10 bullets into a man who didn't respond when they ordered him to. The incident, which state authorities have ruled involved "legally justified" violence, fits a troubling pattern of police using inappropriate force, sometimes firing as many as 40 or 50 bullets into unarmed men who happen to be African American. It's time to ask: What's going on? Read More

May 16, 2009

Let Them Eat Viagra

There's a catch to Pfizer's offering a year's supply of Viagra to the jobless—a "downside," as it were, to all the jokes circulating about its "stimulus plans."

May 11, 2009

Overprescribing Antidepressants

According to a recent study, only one-in-five patients taking antidepressant medication actually has symptoms of depression. The rest are taking drugs for which they have no clear medical need.

April 30, 2009

No, Not Another Patient Zero

When new illnesses emerge and we can't yet gauge their impact or severity, communities sometimes do things they come to regret.

Here's why we need to learn from our mistakes and keep a lid on our metaphors.

April 25, 2009

Using Meds for "Neuro-Enhancement"

Large numbers of undergraduates and high-school students are abusing Adderall and Ritalin off-label, without medical supervision, in hopes of boosting their scholarly performance.

What are the risks and ethics of doing so? Is this acceptable "neuro-enhancement," as some would have it, or a troubling sign that we're putting too much stress on the young? Read More

April 16, 2009

Bipolar disorder and its biomythology: An interview with David Healy

With more than one million American children now on mood-stabilizing drugs and a 4,000% surge in diagnoses of juvenile bipolar disorder and ADHD, it's time we knew more about the history of these disorders and why their definitions were expanded to include a host of new behaviors only recently considered signs of mental illness. Joining me to examine these thorny issues is British psychiatrist David Healy, author of a fascinating new book on the topic, Mania: A Short History of Bipolar Disorder. Read More

April 12, 2009

The Love Bug: A Short Story about a Hormone

A promise of greater trust, bonding, love, lust, and attractiveness: One hormone seems to embody many of our deepest hopes and preoccupations. Is this story too good to be true? Where in this case does science end and fantasy take over?

Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness

Hatred and Civility: The Antisocial Life in Victorian England

Anxiety Basics

From normal butterflies-in-the-stomach to clinically diagnosable conditions such as Panic Disorder, anxiety motivates some people but paralyzes others.

Go to the Anxiety Basics page for more on Anxiety including:

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