popplers

Poor impulse control

Intermittent Explosive Disorder: legitimate psychiatric problem caused by neurochemical imbalance, or scientific-sounding excuse for inexcusable behavior?

[…] " [Emil Coccaro, a leading anger researcher at the University of Chicago] wrote in a recent journal editorial: People who explode are not very lovable. No celebrity is likely to volunteer to be a poster child for Intermittent Explosive Disorder. And philanthropists are less likely to contribute to research aimed at helping people viewed as perpetrators rather than patients or victims.

The patients themselves can be problematic as well, resisting treatment even when surrounded by wrecked lives.

''People say, 'I don't have an illness, I have an anger -- It's not I who have a problem, it's you," said Ronald Kessler of Harvard University, who led the national study on how common mental illnesses are. […]