BOURGUIGNON Lucie & LEMEE Tom
What is anger?
Anger is one of our basic emotion, as are happiness, sadness, anxiety and disgust. We can relate anger to “the fight or flight” response and to the sympathetic nervous system: in theory, anger is expressed in order to prepare us to fight. But in the everyday life, anger is more an internal alarm which tell us when something is wrong or unfair. As a consequence, anger can help us to express when we disagree with a fact, when there is a mistreatment or when it is going too far in our intimacy: anger is a helper to know the limits of our personal space. In fact, this emotion is a normal emotion which takes part of our human experience. But in some cases, anger can cause suffering for the individual who experiences it (he/she losses his/her control at every moments, he/she is labeled as a quick to anger person) and for the close circle (always the target of the anger, feeling insecure with the individual). And what the majority of people don’t know, is that anger can be a sign of depression, and is an alarm we have to be aware of.
For example, in the podcast of February 2019 of the National Public Radio, we can heard Kevin Einbinder, who is a man who suffered from depression. He realized that anger was an underlying factor in many of his relationship issues. For example, he could use sarcastic humor with people, which drove them away. He could also send angry emails to people after ruminating about things that had happened during the day. However, his therapist never focus on his anger, whereas Kevin wish he did, because he thinks that it could help him to cope more effectively in a lot of situations.
Anger and depression in adults and adolescents
Most of the time, people have hazy ideas of symptoms associated with depression: fatigue, deep sadness, hopelessness, loss of interest in things you normally enjoy… However, we usually don’t know that being angry, irritable or mean can also be a symptom of depression. As a matter of fact, anger is listed as a core symptom of depression for adolescents and children, but not in adults’ classifications. But if it is simpler to imagine an adolescent express his/her suffering through angry outbursts against his/her parents or against the society, why is it more difficult to duly note the irritability of an adult as a sign of his/her distress ?
Mark Zimmerman, a professor of psychiatry, indicates that two third of individuals who follow a psychiatric treatment reported notable irritability and anger. Thus, those symptoms are almost also frequent as sadness or anxiety. However, anger is often underestimate in clinical pictures and more specifically in depressive ones. As a consequence, most of the scales used to evaluate if an antidepressant drug is effective or not do not contain anger-specific items. Thus, psychiatrists can not evaluate if those drugs are effective or not to treat anger associate with depression.
However, anger is linked with depression since a long time in the research field: Freud already evoked depression as an anger turned inward. Indeed, people with depression have to deal with an inner critical voice that constantly feed the feelings of being victimized or being an evil person. In this case, the anger is maladaptive and lead us to hate ourselves, to see ourselves as pathetic or powerless. This maladaptive anger drags us down more and more into a state of depression, and that’s why is important to be careful to it.
Words I have learned
The close circle: L’entourage proche
To have a hazy idea of: Avoir une idée vague de
To turn inward: Se replier sur soi
A clinical picture : Un tableau clinique
An underlying factor : Un facteur sous-jacent
To drive someone away : Éloigner quelqu’un
Relationship issues : Des problèmes relationnels
References
Pratt, K. (2014, February 3). Psychology Tools: What is Anger ? A secondary Emotion [blog post]. Retrieved from https://healthypsych.com/psychology-tools-what-is-anger-a-secondary-emotion/
Firestone, L. (2017, October 9). The Role of Anger in Depression [blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/compassion-matters/201710/the-role-anger-in-depression
Greenfieldboyce, B. (2019, February 4). If You’re Often Angry Or Irritable, You May Be Depressed [online podcast]. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/02/04/689747637/if-youre-often-angry-or-irritable-you-may-be-depressed