Depakote also has a really bad side effect, which is death.

In this blunt, darkly ironic line, Kidder underscores the gap between the clinical framing of psychiatric medications as having “side effects” and the lived reality that those effects can be severe or even fatal. By naming death as a “side effect,” she compresses a broader critique: that risk can be minimized in medical or pharmaceutical discourse, and that patients may feel their suffering is treated as an acceptable trade-off. The quote also reads as a warning about vigilance—monitoring adverse reactions, informed consent, and the need for individualized care rather than one-size-fits-all prescribing.