By: Jim Taylor

A British Airways flight was forced to land in Winnipeg; an unruly passenger became violent when flight attendants refused to serve him more alcohol.
In Iowa, a woman was charged after she rear-ended another car four times. The fourth time, she tried to ram the car ahead into a stream of traffic.
In Toronto, a man pleaded guilty to bludgeoning his wife to death with a baseball bat. His lawyer explained that "he had been extremely angry of late."
Dr. Ray DiGuiseppi, chair of psychology at St. John's University in New York, wants "dysfunctional anger" classified as mental illness in the Diagnosis and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, commonly known as the DSM.
"I see a lot of people who are smouldering," agrees Dr. Emil Carcaro, chair of the department of psychiatry at the University of Chicago. "Their anger. is digging a hole in their body."
The DSM, which currently catalogs more than 400 mental disorders, considers anger merely a by-product of depression.
According to the DSM, explains Dr. A.G. Ahmed, director of an anger clinic at the Royal Ottawa Hospital, there are many ways of being depressed or anxious, but "there is no way you can be angry. Anger is not a disorder."

EXPLAINING IT AWAY
DiGuiseppi considers anger a mental illness because it can be treated with psychotherapy. "We focus on rumination, how to give up those thoughts, how to distract yourself, develop peace," he says.
He likens explosive anger to alcohol or gambling addiction. It externalizes blame, he says. It's always someone else's fault. Angry people think, "If you didn't piss me off, I wouldn't have any anger problems."
We used to treat addiction as a sin, back when Carrie Nation attacked bars with hymns and hatchets. Sin presumes that sinners are responsible for their actions.
Forty years ago, psychologist Karl Menninger wrote a book called "Whatever Happened to Sin?" He suggested three ways we rationalized sin out of our consciousness.
We turned sin into an illness, for which a person cannot be blamed. Instead, the person needs sympathy and support.
We turned sin into a social symptom, which is not a person's fault either. The person is a victim; society's to blame.
Finally, we treated sin as a crime, better left to professionals -- police, courts, social workers.
I wonder if we're now doing something similar to mental illness.

THE ULTIMATE STIGMA
The ultimate social stigma of our time is not AIDS, cancer, or physical deformity. It is not even obesity. It is mental illness.
Three friends developed mental disabilities in recent years.
One was relatively mild -- early onset Alzheimer's Disease.
Another was more serious -- he had to be hospitalized.
And the third.?
Well, let's just say that the third friend spent an hour describing how a conspiracy of doctors had taken over her downtown Toronto apartment building. They used her for experiments. They got into her apartment by miniaturizing themselves. She could hear them discussing her, ten floors below. They had impregnated her with spores, disguised as fruit juice. Her apartment was bugged with video cameras.
Oh, yes, she had captured a praying mantis, from Venezuela, with a brain weighing 55 pounds. I haven't heard delusions like that since my father spent a week on Demerol.
Except that she's not taking Demerol. I'd feel better if she were. Because then I could blame her mental malfunctions on chemical reactions.

OF FLESH AND OF SPIRIT
We tend to divide mental illness into two classes. If the problem can be solved with medication or surgery, it's okay. We can talk about it. We can ask about the treatment and the prognosis, as we might ask about pneumonia or gallstones.
The illness is separate from the person.
But if the problem is in the mind itself, we shy away from the subject. We don't ask, "How's your dementia doing?" or "Can you think straight yet?"
If there's something wrong with a person's mind, we act as if there must be something wrong with the person herself.
The apostle Paul's distinction between flesh and spirit persists. If it's of the flesh, medical science can do something. If it's of the spirit, it belongs in the realm of demons and angels -- only God can help.
None of my three friends could be held personally responsible for their mental dysfunctions. But can the same be said of rampaging anger?

QUESTIONS OF RESPONSIBILITY
As a freshly ordained minister, United Church Moderator David Giuliano had a counselling session with a man who admitted beating his wife. His excuse -- "I get angry and I just can't stop myself."
Giuliano deliberately insulted his parishioner.
The man flared into anger. He leaped up, fists clenched. Then with an effort he controlled himself and sat down again.
"So," said Giuliano, "you can control your anger when you want to hit me. Why can't you control it when you want to hit your wife?"
There's the dilemma -- when does an illness absolve a person of responsibility?
Using Menninger's criteria, anger could be classed as a social symptom. Road rage increases dramatically in urban centres -- a result of population pressure and traffic congestion.
Or treated as a crime. Especially when it turns into dangerous driving or physical violence.
But if victims of mental illness aren't responsible for their affliction -- and if "dysfunctional anger" is a form of mental illness -- then drivers who treat highways as demolition derbies and spouses who batter their partners need treatment, not judgement.
Conversely, if we hold them responsible, then my friend could also be considered responsible for her delusions about miniature men and giant mantises.
Perhaps you can learn to control anger. But can you control delusions by an effort of will? Can a flawed mind detect its own malfunctions, let alone correct them?
I think treating anger as an illness is a mistake. But I've no doubt earlier critics said the same about addiction.
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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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