Anger problems across the anxiety disorders: findings from a population-based study

Abstract

Overall, these findings lend support to the emerging literature demonstrating a potentially important relationship between anxiety disorders and anger problems.

The Role of Anger in the Relationship Between Internalising Symptoms and Aggression in Adolescents

“…Empirical research has shown that anxiety and depression are associated with the emotion of anger as well as aggressive behaviour among children (Erwin et al 2003;Vitaro et al 2002), adolescents (Batanova and Loukas 2011;Fite et al 2010;Marsee et al 2008) and adults (Barret et al 2013;Hawkins and Cougle 2011;Moscovitch et al 2008). The nature of these relationships, however, remains unclear.…”

“…Further to this, adolescence represents a peak risk period for the development of internalising disorders such as anxiety and depression (Costello et al 2011). A growing body of literature suggests that internalising symptoms are associated with anger as well as aggressive behaviour among a variety of samples (Batanova and Loukas 2011;Dutton and Karakanta 2013;Hawkins and Cougle 2011), although studies among adolescent samples are limited. The co-occurrence of internalising symptoms and aggression often presents within clinical settings (Lilienfeld 2003;McConaughy and Skiba 1994) and it is often difficult to determine whether one of the observed symptom clusters is perhaps at the origin of the other.…”

PTSD Trajectory, Comorbidity, and Utilization of Mental Health Services among Reserves

“…Second, the present analysis was cross-sectional in nature and thus we are unable to establish whether anger problems developed after PTSD or whether anger problems pre-existed exposure to trauma or the development of PTSD. As there is some question in the literature about the temporality of how anger problems impact the phenomenology of PTSD (Andrews, Brewin, Rose, & Kirk, 2000;Andrews, Brewin, Stewart, Philpott, & Hejdenberg, 2009;Ehlers, Mayou, & Bryant, 1998Feeny, Zoellner, & Foa, 2000;Forbes et al, 2008;Hawkins & Cougle, 2011;Koenen, Stellman, Stellman, & Sommer, 2003;McHugh, Forbes, Bates, Hopwood, & Creamer, 2012), it would be useful to follow a military cohort to assess pre-trauma anger levels and to ascertain trajectories of anger response and PTSD symptomatology over time.…”

Impulsivity in anxiety disorders

“…Likewise, it is somewhat surprising the scarcity of studies regarding main behavioural correlates of impulsivity such as suicidality (Ma, Xiang et al 2009;Thibodeau, Welch et al 2013). On the contrary, few studies have examined the relationship between anger and GAD suggesting that anger may be an important emotion associated with the disorder (Erdem 2009;Hawkins and Cougle 2011;Deschenes, Dugas et al 2012). For example, Erdem (Erdem 2009) found that individuals with GAD had greater levels of trait anger and lower anger control, both in an externalized as well as in an internalized expression, than did non-anxious individuals.…”

“…However, the relative contribution of each anger dimension to GAD is actually unclear: for example, Hawkins et al (Hawkins and Cougle 2011) suggested that a diagnosis of GAD was related to a greater tendency to express anger externally, while Deschenes et al (Deschenes, Dugas et al 2012) found that an internalized anger expression was a stronger predictor of GAD diagnosis.…”