Anger, Disease and Illness
Summarized by Ilene L. Dillon, M.S.W.

   A wide range of physical problems and illnesses have, in recent years, been correlated with unresolved emotional states, especially the emotion of anger.

   March 21, 2004, the U.K’s Times Online reports “the link between anger and illness is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.”  An article by Jerome Burne reports that anger has been linked to heart problems, ulcers and bowel disease.  Reporting on a study in Circulation magazine, Burne says that “Compared with calm men, angry men had a 20 per cent higher chance of dying from all causes.”

   Even though the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV, the mental health field’s standard for identifying emotional illness, has no means to describe or classify anger and aggression (they are treated as “symptoms” of psychiatric disorders but are not systematically classified themselves---“Anger, Aggression and Addiction” by Cardwell C. Nuckols, Ph.D., Dual Diagnosis Recovery Network), these emotions are recognized as symptoms of bipolar illness, paranoid schizophrenia, post traumatic stress disorder, attention deficit disorder, antisocial borderline disorder and paranoid character disturbances.  They are also related to addictions to alcohol, marijuana and stimulant drugs.

   Supported by a study reported in the May 2000 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, reports show that even when you are young, the more hostile you are the greater your chances of developing coronary-artery calcification, which leads to heart problems and attacks.  Subjects with hostility scores above average had 2.5 times the risk of calcifications of the arteries than those with scores below average.  (www.inteliHealth.com)  

   Dr. William Mueller presented his findings at the 44th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention held by the American Heart Association.  After following 160 people ages 14-17 for three years, he found that teens who constantly suppress feelings of anger or lose their tempers are more likely to be overweight than teens who are better at controlling their anger.  Mueller states “The more dysfunctional the anger, the heavier the person.”

   Horesh, Zalsman and Apter, who work in the Psychology Department of Bar Ilan University in Israel, studying adolescent girls with severe anorexia nervosa, conclude:  “The findings support the notion that internalized anger and defective experience of self-control are important factors in the psychopathology of adolescent anorexic inpatient females.

   “Moreover, patients with HCV (Hepatitis C Virus) infection are more depressed and harbor greater feelings of anger and hostility compared with those with non-liver chronic diseases,”  conclude Obhrai, Hall and Anand in a report in 2000 to Baylor College of Medicine and the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Houston, Texas.

   There is no longer a question: held-onto anger underlies psychological and physical illness—perhaps all human illnesses.  Mastering and releasing anger is a very worthy goal!