Is anger its own disorder?

Anger problems now has its own name: Intermittent Explosive Disorder. Many treatment regimens in depression and bipolar disorder address anger and rage that patients often experience during an episode or during the course of the illness.

I don’t dispute anger being a critical issue to address, but I am not sure that our continual splitting off symptoms into its own “disorder” is a good idea. It takes us farther away from addressing the person as a whole, and closer to treating the individual disorders almost as if these are unrelated to each other and therefore warranting its own medication. I think this brings us even closer to overmedicating.

SOURCE: Out of control anger
By Carey Goldberg, Globe Staff | August 8, 2005

They used to just call it a bad temper and tell you to count to 10. Then came bunches of guys sitting around in circles and learning ”anger management.” Now, increasingly, the catchphrase is ”Intermittent Explosive Disorder.” Researchers delving into pathological anger report that it is more widespread than anyone had suspected. And that their understanding of its biological roots is deepening, raising prospects of better treatment. A national study found that at some point in their lives, about 5 percent of people have such frequent, serious blow-ups that they qualify as suffering from Intermittent Explosive Disorder, a full-fledged psychiatric diagnosis. It is twice as common in men as in women and tends to begin before age 20.