Social Anxiety

Years ago, when parents came to him worried because their kids seemed abnormally shy, Murray Stein, a psychiatrist at UC San Diego, would tell them not to worry -- that most children outgrow periods of intense shyness. "Now we're not so quick to dismiss their concern," he says. Although most very shy kids do emerge from their shells, as many as one in three become more and more troubled, according to Stein, one of the country's leading experts in childhood anxiety disorders.

I would like to acknowledge Willie Danz for causing me a bit of social anxiety ("The Ocularist," by Tracie White, April 10). One of my patients has a Danz-made prosthetic eye. When she arrives for an appointment I remember that she has a prosthetic and think to myself that I should make eye contact with her real eye. But, alas, at casual viewing I cannot tell which eye is the real one. I end up feeling awkward as my view darts from eye to eye or...

The Angels bolstered their sagging rotation with a right-hander who has been one of baseball's top starting pitchers over the last 4 1/2 years, acquiring Zack Greinke from the Milwaukee Brewers for shortstop Jean Segura and double-A pitchers Johnny Hellweg and Ariel Pena on Friday. The deal was remarkable for the Angels in that they did not have to give up two of their top young major leaguers, center fielder Peter Bourjos and pitcher Garrett Richards. Segura, recently called up from double-A Arkansas, was preparing to join the Angels for stretch when he was pulled off the field by first-base coach Alfredo Griffen and sent to Manager Mike Scioscia's office to be informed of the deal.

As an adolescent, Rebel Wilson thought she was destined for a black-and-white existence as an actuary, computing equations in a cubicle. The young Australian was painfully shy, so much so that she recalls her social anxiety as bordering on being a serious disorder. Then one day, her mother, tired of her daughter's isolated behavior, dragged her to an acting class and slammed the door behind her, leaving the 14-year-old to fend for herself among a group of extroverted strangers. "It was so embarrassing," Wilson recalled over breakfast recently near her West Hollywood home.

The contraceptive sponge making a comeback: The Today contraceptive sponge, a product that drew a small but fiercely loyal group of female users earlier this decade, will soon be available again in the United States. The sponge will be reintroduced by Allendale Pharmaceuticals Inc., which bought the rights to the product from the manufacturer that had withdrawn it due to production problems. At one time, the sponge was the most popular nonprescription contraceptive in the country.

A small part of the brain is providing new clues to social anxiety disorders. Researchers at the Harvard Medical School studying images of brain activity found that adults who were timid as children display very different brain signal patterns from those who were bold and outgoing when younger. The findings come from a 2-decade-old research project that has followed a group of more than 100 people from age 2 to adulthood, monitoring their behavior and psychiatric changes over time.

The Philadelphia Phillies put left fielder Raul Ibanez on the 15-day disabled list Thursday because of a strained left groin. "It's been bothering him, I guess, a little bit off and on since the beginning of April," General Manager Ruben Amaro Jr. said. Ibanez is batting .312 with 22 homers and 59 RBIs, ranking second in the NL in homers and RBIs.

From his second-floor apartment at the counterculture crossing of Haight and Ashbury streets, Arthur Evans watches a new generation of wayward youth invade his free-spirited neighborhood. The former flower child was among the legions of idealistic wanderers who migrated here during the Vietnam War to "tune in, turn on and drop out."