An Epidemic of Anger

I am not a psychologist. I have eight graduate hours in psychology (just enough to be dangerous), including a four-hour course in abnormal psychology, which I took in 1970. So even the little education I have in the field is seriously dated. But I have access to resources and know how to do research.

I also have training and certification in several counselling models and in conflict resolution, again somewhat dated. So, I have some familiarity with the language and can recognize most symptoms of mental disorders, even if I can’t name them, and that comprises the layman’s perspective I bring to address a sweeping and controversial topic. My comments here will comprise as much question as statement.

The impetus for writing is “Guns don’t kill; people do.” I actually agree with that statement. My concern is that at no level of policymaking and administration with capacity to make a difference is anything being done to address the issue of people who kill with guns. The dismissive approach by second amendment advocates is to scapegoat mental illness (and, BTW, I support the second amendment; although, my interpretation differs from the National Rifle Association’s). That scapegoating is my focus in this writing, and I have two points to consider.

First, it is my general observation that, while mental illness is blamed, efforts to deal with mental illness are being defunded and deregulated, a process that began as a liberal movement.

“Deinstitutionalization as a policy for state hospitals began in the period of the civil rights movement... Three forces drove the movement of people with severe mental illness from hospitals into the community: the belief that mental hospitals were cruel and inhumane; the hope that new antipsychotic medications offered a cure; and the desire to save money. It has not worked out as well as expected on any of the three fronts. People with severe mental illness are still found in deplorable environments, medications have not successfully improved function in all patients even when they improve symptoms, and institutional closings have deluged underfunded community services with new populations they were ill-equipped to handle.”[1]

Deinstitutionalization was intensified in the 1980s by conservative legislators in a general movement to defund public assistance programs. That general focus continues today.

So, with responsibility spread across the political spectrum, the mentally ill are turned out on the street. By definition, many mental illnesses render people incapable of sustaining careers, vocations, or even steady work and therefore unable financially to obtain the care they need.

The upshot is that while mental illness is scapegoated, the same people who do the scapegoating work against funding any possible resolution to the problem.

Moreover, my second point is that mental illness is characteristic of only a very small percentage of people who kill with guns.

Violent crimes committed by people with severe mental illnesses get a lot of attention, but such attacks are relatively rare. Paolo del Vecchio of the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has said, ‘Violence by those with mental illness is so small that even if you could somehow cure it all, 95 percent of violent crime would still exist.’ A 2009 study by Seena Fazel found a slightly higher rate of violent crime in schizophrenics—but it was almost entirely accounted for by alcohol and drug abuse. Likewise, the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study found that mentally ill people who did not have a substance abuse problem were no more violent than other people in their neighborhoods.[2] (italics mine)

Laura L. Hayes, Ph.D., a psychologist in Bethesda, Md., works with adults, couples, and teens integrating mindfulness with traditional therapies. It is her conviction that unbridled and unmanaged anger is the primary cause of violence, including violence with guns.

“Violence is not a product of mental illness. Nor is violence generally the action of ordinary, stable individuals who suddenly “break” and commit crimes of passion. Violent crimes are committed by violent people, those who do not have the skills to manage their anger. Most homicides are committed by people with a history of violence. Murderers are rarely ordinary, law-abiding citizens, and they are also rarely mentally ill. Violence is a product of compromised anger management skills. (italics mine)

“We are a culture awash in anger.”[3]

Hayes documents that 80 to 90 percent of murderers had prior police records and 46 percent of domestic murderers had restraining orders against them at the time of the murder. So much for the value of restraining orders!

Similar studies document that people who display violent expressions of anger tend to come from backgrounds in which uncontrolled anger was common. We learn and adapt violent coping behaviors when we are not offered alternative responses.

In my own training, anger was presented as a secondary emotion triggered by fear or deprivation. Hayes describes it as part of the basic biological reaction to perceived danger—a physiological response in which we stop thinking and mobilize for immediate action: fight or flight. It helped our primitive ancestors survive; but in our lives it has proven more a hindrance than a help. “The angrier you feel, the less clearly you can think, and therefore the less able you are to negotiate, take a new perspective, or effectively handle a provocation.”[4]

Our culture provides no appropriate model, at any level, for the safe or constructive expression of anger.

Hayes suggests, and I concur, that anger management skills are not difficult to learn, and should be taught to children and adolescents. If we wait until violence has become habitual, it’s too late.

I am in process of writing to the legislators who represent my area, pleading with them to introduce legislation requiring anger management to be taught in both public and private educational systems beginning at elementary levels. It will incur only a small economic investment and has the potential of reducing violence as the response to confrontation or fear.

It can’t hurt.

That’s the way it looks through the Flawed Glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

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[1] Deinstitutionalization of People with Mental Illness: Causes and Consequences | Journal of Ethics | American Medical Association

[2] https://www.newsleader.com/story/opinion/columnists/2014/04/14/mentally-ill-people-arent-killers-angry-people-are/7711703/

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.