Having ‘uncontrollable’ angry outbursts meets the criteria for “intermittent explosive disorder” – a diagnosable mental illness. According to a recent study, 7.3% of Americans could be diagnosable within their lifetime – that’s 1 in 14 people.
The diagnosis just seems to describe people who have occasional and extreme angry outbursts that are out of proportion to the stresses they experience.
No wonder diagnostic manuals get a bad name when behaviour within the normal spectrum (even if it is only displayed by a minority of people) is pathologised as a ‘mental illness’.
I suspect this reflects an increasing attitude than unless something is defined as a ‘mental illness’ people can’t be offered help for their problem, or perhaps, won’t be willing to seek assistance.
Link to write-up from New Scientist.
Link to abstract of scientific study.
2 Comments
Argh, this kind of thing makes me angry, ironically. The end result of so much “diagnosis” is that everyone has some form of “disorder” of some kind of another – overweight, below weight, depressed, hyper, not happy enough, *too* happy… If you’re not “perfect” (i.e. “normal”) then there’s something wrong with you and you should instantly seek help in the form of drugs *and* therapy.
If you follow Foucault, this is all just a form of control. Abnormality means that you can be observed, monitored and traced as an *individual*, by whomever (generally a mix of the state, the therapists and the drugs companies). Nowhere in the existing set-up does it really allow for the ideas that
a) “biological” abnormality is linked to cultural processes – e.g. anger is unleashed or controlled through how we *think* we should behave (especially if we repress that anger for a long time, letting it build up)
and b) you don’t have to be normal at all, in fact.
Should babies be classified as “mentally unstable” for their “irrational” outbursts of screaming at 3am?
It would be nice if people could seek and get the necessary help without it having to be labelled a mental illness. However, my little cousin (who has a family history of mental illness and other disorders–dyslexia, ADHD, bipolar disorder, autism, Tourette’s, OCD) has a rage disorder, and you can see that his explosive outbursts are very painful for him and that he is truly not in control. I think it is preferable to have him labelled as mentally ill and in treatment than as a loose cannon.