Social Anxiety

I come from a long line of worriers and have been something of one myself as far back as I can remember. As a child, I worried about bad guys hiding under my bed; as a teenager, I got worked up about exams at school. These days, the world economy, finances and my children's safety (not in that order) are just a few of the things that keep me up at night. While I'm tossing and turning struggling to keep my fears in check, my husband drifts off into a sound sleep. Very few things trouble him enough to lose sleep over.

PHOENIX - His face is shadowed under an oversized baseball cap. His gaze is often averted to the ceiling or floor. His handshake is distant, his voice is small, his sentences trail off into awkward silence. The first impression of Dodgers pitcher Zack Greinke is that, despite having just signed a $147-million deal with a team in baseball's second-largest market, he simply wants to run away and hide. It is a daily act of courage that he does not. "I didn't think there was anything wrong with me," he said Friday.

Re "Pills for What Ails You Socially," Opinion, July 23: While I agree generally with Scott Gottlieb's assertion that drug companies are inappropriately advertising medication as the solution to social ills and consequently medicalizing symptoms that are normal traits, I disagree with his use of social anxiety/social phobia as an example of this. Perhaps he is confusing "shyness" with "social anxiety"; social anxiety/phobia can be a severe and disabling anxiety disorder. Medication alone is not the answer.

White's struggles Off-court problems -- now they are called "issues" -- between players and teams used to be worked out behind closed doors and often at a logical pace. Then came social media, and more specifically, Twitter. The scary thing is that the safety net is gone. The filter has vanished and it is entirely possible that every thought from an executive, coach or player -- positive and negative -- can go viral within minutes. This is aptly illustrated by the Twitter account of the Houston Rockets' Royce White -- his handle is @Highway_30 -- and his current dispute with the team over the handling of his anxiety disorder.

Scientists call it the love hormone, the chemical that binds people to one another. Now researchers from the University of Zurich in Switzerland have found that the hormone, released in high amounts in mothers after childbirth, can improve a person's ability to interpret what is going on in another person -- by reading information gleaned from their eyes.

White's struggles Off-court problems -- now they are called "issues" -- between players and teams used to be worked out behind closed doors and often at a logical pace. Then came social media, and more specifically, Twitter. The scary thing is that the safety net is gone. The filter has vanished and it is entirely possible that every thought from an executive, coach or player -- positive and negative -- can go viral within minutes. This is aptly illustrated by the Twitter account of the Houston Rockets' Royce White -- his handle is @Highway_30 -- and his current dispute with the team over the handling of his anxiety disorder.

Shyness, once viewed as becoming in some people, is today being cast as a prevalent medical problem. Thankfully, shy people can receive relief in the form of a pill called Paxil. The medicine is an old drug being applied to a novel disease called "social anxiety disorder." Both the disease and the drug are largely the innovation of the drug's manufacturer and its Madison Avenue advertising agency.

Facebook, the social networking giant that connects 845 million people to one another, may be a jolly gabfest for the self-assured. But for those who suffer from low self-esteem, it appears to be a rather nasty trap, luring such people into self-disclosures that prompt many a Facebook friend to agree with their low opinion of themselves. A new study, set to be published in the journal Psychological Science, explored the dynamics of friendship on Facebook to see what benefits or pitfalls the site might offer to a population that could use the propping up of a few new friends: those who think poorly of themselves, fear judgment by others and are prone to social isolation and depression.

"Pills for What Ails You Socially" (Opinion, July 23) is wrong to assert that "social anxiety disorder" and the antidepressant medicine used to treat it are "largely the innovation" of the drug's manufacturer and its ad agency. Specific criteria for diagnosing social anxiety disorder, also called social phobia, have been described in the American Psychiatric Assn.'s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders since 1980. Paxil, an antidepressant, was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treatment of depression in 1993 and was not approved for treatment of social anxiety disorder until 1999.

As a running back for the New Orleans Saints, Ricky Williams would repeatedly hurl his body into a wall of 300-pound defensive linemen, yet he was too unnerved to take off his helmet during interviews. He would allow his mail to accumulate for days, fearful his neighbors were watching his every move. Even trips to the grocery store turned into harrowing ordeals. "I would hide from people in the store," he said.

Facebook, the social networking giant that connects 845 million people to one another, may be a jolly gabfest for the self-assured. But for those who suffer from low self-esteem, it appears to be a rather nasty trap, luring such people into self-disclosures that prompt many a Facebook friend to agree with their low opinion of themselves. A new study, set to be published in the journal Psychological Science, explored the dynamics of friendship on Facebook to see what benefits or pitfalls the site might offer to a population that could use the propping up of a few new friends: those who think poorly of themselves, fear judgment by others and are prone to social isolation and depression.

I come from a long line of worriers and have been something of one myself as far back as I can remember. As a child, I worried about bad guys hiding under my bed; as a teenager, I got worked up about exams at school. These days, the world economy, finances and my children's safety (not in that order) are just a few of the things that keep me up at night. While I'm tossing and turning struggling to keep my fears in check, my husband drifts off into a sound sleep. Very few things trouble him enough to lose sleep over.

Scientists call it the love hormone, the chemical that binds people to one another. Now researchers from the University of Zurich in Switzerland have found that the hormone, released in high amounts in mothers after childbirth, can improve a person's ability to interpret what is going on in another person -- by reading information gleaned from their eyes.

As a running back for the New Orleans Saints, Ricky Williams would repeatedly hurl his body into a wall of 300-pound defensive linemen, yet he was too unnerved to take off his helmet during interviews. He would allow his mail to accumulate for days, fearful his neighbors were watching his every move. Even trips to the grocery store turned into harrowing ordeals. "I would hide from people in the store," he said.

"Pills for What Ails You Socially" (Opinion, July 23) is wrong to assert that "social anxiety disorder" and the antidepressant medicine used to treat it are "largely the innovation" of the drug's manufacturer and its ad agency. Specific criteria for diagnosing social anxiety disorder, also called social phobia, have been described in the American Psychiatric Assn.'s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders since 1980. Paxil, an antidepressant, was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treatment of depression in 1993 and was not approved for treatment of social anxiety disorder until 1999.

Re "Pills for What Ails You Socially," Opinion, July 23: While I agree generally with Scott Gottlieb's assertion that drug companies are inappropriately advertising medication as the solution to social ills and consequently medicalizing symptoms that are normal traits, I disagree with his use of social anxiety/social phobia as an example of this. Perhaps he is confusing "shyness" with "social anxiety"; social anxiety/phobia can be a severe and disabling anxiety disorder. Medication alone is not the answer.

PHOENIX - His face is shadowed under an oversized baseball cap. His gaze is often averted to the ceiling or floor. His handshake is distant, his voice is small, his sentences trail off into awkward silence. The first impression of Dodgers pitcher Zack Greinke is that, despite having just signed a $147-million deal with a team in baseball's second-largest market, he simply wants to run away and hide. It is a daily act of courage that he does not. "I didn't think there was anything wrong with me," he said Friday.

She's a 26-year-old former party girl with social anxiety issues, a motorcycle-riding iconoclast who dropped out of USC and attends meetings in Led Zeppelin T-shirts. Megan Ellison is also the most powerful new producer in Hollywood, running a burgeoning movie company from her $33-million compound in the hills above the Sunset Strip - and giving a critical boost to the kinds of adult dramas the major studios have all but abandoned. Hollywood has long attracted wealthy, star-struck investors who don't appreciate the difficulty (or "complexity")

Shyness, once viewed as becoming in some people, is today being cast as a prevalent medical problem. Thankfully, shy people can receive relief in the form of a pill called Paxil. The medicine is an old drug being applied to a novel disease called "social anxiety disorder." Both the disease and the drug are largely the innovation of the drug's manufacturer and its Madison Avenue advertising agency.