14 DAY TRIAL // According to scientists at the Harvard Medical School (HMS), it would appear that around 66 percent of all teenagers in the United States experienced, or engaged in, an anger attack that resulted in the proliferation of violence and interpersonal conflict, property damage and so on.
Scientists were especially interested in figuring out whether the adolescents moved from threatening violence to engaging in it, and found that that was indeed the case. The conclusions of this study are very worrying, given the sheer percentage of those displaying that behavior.
HMS scientists say that these anger attacks are actually significantly more common than experts determined in previous investigations. The fact that so many people in this age group were unable to control their anger should be of concern to anyone.
The data scientists used for this investigation were collected from 10,148 teens in the United States, all of whom were part of the National Comorbidity Survey Replication Adolescent Supplement. The team also sought to analyze the incidence of Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED) in this age group.
IED is a syndrome in which patients display persistent attacks of uncontrollable anger, which cannot in any way be explained by other existing mental conditions. Details of the new research effort appear in the July 2 issue of the esteemed scientific journal Archives of General Psychiatry.
In the study group, scientists found that 1 in 2 teens displayed symptoms consistent with IED. Proportionally, this implies that as many as 6 million US teens may be suffering from this syndrome.
The HMS McNeil Family professor of health care policy, Ronald Kessler, also the senior author of the research paper, explains that the onset of IED during childhood and adolescence is tied to an increased risk of developing depression, anxiety, and substance abuse and dependency later on in life.
“If we can detect IED early and intervene with effective treatment right away, we can prevent a substantial amount of future violence perpetration and associated psychopathology,” Kessler explains.
Funds for the research effort were provided by the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIH), the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the John W. Alden Trust.
Scientists at the Boston Children’s Hospital and the Boston University School of Education were also a part of the research effort, PsychCentral explains.