Researchers have found that people with depression and anxiety who experienced traumatic childhoods often grow up to become angry adults, and the more severe the trauma, the angrier the adult. In addition to the impact on social interactions and mental health, depression and anxiety are more challenging to treat.
According to earlier research, more than 40% of patients with both anxiety and depression have been shown to be prone to anger. In comparison, only 5 percent of healthy controls have this problem. The ongoing Netherlands Depression and Anxiety Study, which was designed to follow the progression of depression and anxiety disorders over several years, provided the data for the current study.
Past childhood trauma
Starting in 2004, the study enrolled participants between the ages of 18 and 65 and began asking them about their childhood; by the end of the study, 2,276 people had participated. Over a period of several years, they were able to find out if there was any past childhood trauma, such as losing a parent, parental divorce, or being placed in foster care.
They also asked participants about neglect and emotional, physical and sexual abuse. Participants were also later checked for various psychiatric symptoms related to depression and anxiety, including their tendency to become angry and how it manifested itself.
Lead researcher Nienke De Bles (Leiden University, The Netherlands) said: “There is surprisingly little research on anger in general. The Netherlands Depression and Anxiety Study is a well-established study that produced a lot of good scientific data, but there has been no significant work that has looked at childhood trauma data to see if this is associated with increased levels of anger. Now we have found that there is a link.”
We found that anxious or depressed people with a history of emotional neglect, physical or psychological abuse were 1.3 to 2 times more likely to have anger problems. We also found that the more traumatic the childhood experience, the greater the propensity for adult anger. We cannot definitively say that trauma causes anger, but the connection is clear.
We found that children who suffered emotional neglect had an increased tendency to grow up to be irritable or easily angered adults, while those who were physically abused were more prone to tantrums or antisocial personality traits. Sexual abuse tended to lead to suppressed anger, possibly due to greater sensitivity to rejection – but this needs to be confirmed”.
She continued, “Being easily angered can have several consequences. It can make personal interactions more difficult and can have consequences for your mental health and well-being. But people who get angry easily are also more likely to drop out of psychiatric treatment, so that anger may mean that it reduces their chances of a better life.”
If a person suppresses their anger, the therapist may not see it. We believe it should be standard practice to ask patients suffering from depression and anxiety about anger and past trauma, even when the patient is not displaying current anger. Psychiatric treatment of past trauma may differ from treatment of current depression, so the psychiatrist must try to understand the cause in order to offer the right treatment for each patient.
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