'Side Effects' Warning: This Movie Causes Intrigue

Psychiatry is one field where the truth is stranger than fiction. Hollywood understands this. The stories we hear behind closed doors; the experience of transference and counter-transference; the complex dynamics driving thoughts, feelings and behaviors in individuals and systems; this stuff can’t be made up!

This is why many TV crime shows and movies employ psychiatric experts to lend some credibility to the big-screen depiction of psych wards, patients, and therapy sessions.

Portrayal of mental illness in film is very popular. It’s fascinating to spend about two hours watching a drama unfold, while we, as moviegoers, escape from our own personal dramas. Hollywood’s voyeurism into psychiatry is classically entertaining and provocative.

Recently released Side Effects is a psychological thriller directed by Steven Soderbergh and co-produced by real-life forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Sasha Bardey. Sure it’s fiction, but Dr. Bardey’s experiences and insights into the powerful world where law overlaps with mental health, add a sense of credibility and soul to the movie, that resonates with audiences.

Central character, Rooney Mara, convincingly plays a melancholic young woman sinking beyond despair into the depths of a major depressive episode. After she is prescribed antidepressants, the film follows the ramifications of a serious event that is attributed to the medication’s side effects.

Suspenseful plot twists intertwine with brilliant acting and leaves audiences feeling thrilled. The psychodrama occasionally derails from reality when the doctors (played by the fashionable Jude Law and Catherine Zeta-Jones) have salacious affairs with patients, use shock treatment as a threat, and involuntarily hospitalize patients out of revenge. Still, this is Hollywood, and Dr. Bardey’s input results in just enough plausibility to make the storyline compelling.

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