Jake Plummer, take note. A new psychiatric "finding" suggests that drivers who cut people off in traffic may not be behaving badly after all. Perhaps they're just sick and need medication.
The study, partially funded by drug companies that involved researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of Chicago, identified a cause for road rage: a mental illness the authors call "intermittent explosive disorder." The malady reportedly afflicts 16 million Americans, mostly men, and is presumably more prevalent than schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
But the "study" sounds less like a scientific breakthrough than a marketing gimmick by pharmaceutical companies - and an open invitation for trial lawyers to absolve dangerous "jerks" in court from taking responsibility for their actions.
After all, Dr. Emil Coccaro, chairman of psychiatry at the University of Chicago, and his colleagues did not conduct physical examinations, perform brain scans or analyze clinical data. Instead, they asked 9,000 adults if they ever became angry enough to destroy something or hit or threaten another person.
Between 5 percent and 7 percent of those surveyed said they had "lost control" more than three times, making them likely IED patients.
Fear not, however. The disorder can be treated with therapy and medications, including Prozac and Zoloft, which just happen to be made by two of the four drugmakers that helped underwrite the study for the National Institutes of Mental Health.
Frequent, uncontrolled outbursts of anger can indeed indicate psychological or physiological problems. But claiming that garden-variety hotheads may be mentally ill and not fully responsible for their actions reinforces the worst stereotypes of the psychiatric profession.
And for prestigious institutions to tout such "findings" without conducting original physical research smacks of desperation . . . or worse.
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