When anger is a mental health issue

A new report from The Mental Health Foundation has brought the country’s attention to the topic of anger. About time too. (You can access all their very pertinent links from that one link.)

Articles have therefore appeared in a variety of media (see here and here) and an interesting issue to emerge is whether anger is a problem that can be the basis of a referral. GPs reckon that anger isn’t classed as a mental health issue and therefore there is no obvious referral route.

Well, most of my books on child therapy have examples of young people working on their explosive tempers, so someone somewhere
– thinks that failure to manage anger appropriately represents a mental health issue, and
– knows where to refer a young person with such a problem.
How come it’s different for adults?

Only last week, someone approached me via my website, worried about his very angry acting-out friend (maybe it was himself, and this was a displaced request for help). He was out of my age range for seeing, but I referred him to various sources of help. GPs should make it their business to find suitable help in response to these requests. And we should make ourselves known to them.

It would be easy to list reasons why adults today are so angry. But kids? Tests… stress… frustration… absent carers… cramped freedom… impaired brain development due to diet, drugs, neglect… lack of celeb role models who use anger positively… and perhaps also living around very angry adults who damage them in innumerable ways, causing them to be angry themselves and turn to violence.

A superb chapter called “Cradled in Terror: Children’s Capacity to be Violent” is found in the middle of Camila Batmanghelidjh’s book Shattered Lives. Camila works with the most deprived and violent young people – and the Government’s recent decision to offer her funding for Kids Company is excellent, though more is needed.

I’m all in favour of anger that doesn’t lead to physical violence. It’s a wonderful emotion that can prompt us to positive action – whereas lashing out in an uncontrolled way (so often the cause of a young person ending up in our rooms) signposts trouble. If kids can learn to hear their anger, pause to understand its meaning and then act suitably on their findings, they will have a most useful skill for life in our up-tight society. Whatever model we use, surely this is our aim?

My all-time favourite book on this topic is Nick Luxmoore’s Working with Anger and Young People. I can’t recommend it too highly. But Deborah Plummer has just published a very good book for those who work with 5s-12s: Anger Management Games for Children, which has a great introductory section on anger and a large section of short games for different groups.