Charlie Sheen’s Allergic Reaction and Anger Management

Yesterday it was widely reported that actor Charlie Sheen, 45, engaged in “disorderly conduct” and voluntarily checked himself into a New York hospital for psychiatric evaluation. According to Mr. Sheen’s publicist, the actor had suffered from an “allergic reaction” to an unnamed medication. No further details are available at this time.

We have previously written about Mr. Sheen’s anger management problems and history of substance abuse and domestic violence. Because some forms of antisocial behavior have been classified as psychiatric disorders, we wondered whether anger in some forms could constitute a bona fide mental disease and so we did some research. Here are our findings.

According to the “bible” of mental illnesses (DSM-IV), anger is not a stand-alone diagnosis but is often associated with other mental disorders, particularly GAD — generalized anxiety disorder. (Some anger cases are diagnosed as a mental illness called Intermittent Explosive Disorder according to another classification system (ICD-10).)

According to recent articles in medical journals, some authorities believe that diagnostic criteria can and should be developed to distinguish the normal emotion of anger from repeated episodes of anger so severe that it can result in physical or emotional harm to the patient himself or those around him. One of these authorities, Professor Raymond DiGiuseppe of St. John’s University, has a 165-page presentation that describes many aspects of anger as a psychiatric disorder.

According to Dr. DiGiuseppe, some people are opposed to making anger a mental disease and he cites the example of feminists who believe that if anger is a disease, domestic violence offenders will be held less culpable for their antisocial and aggressive behaviors, in other words they’ll be off the hook. Other people think anger should be considered a mental illness because they cannot get research grants to study anger from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) because NIH only funds research on “real diseases.”

For many celebrities, whether their problems are substance abuse, sex addiction or something else, treatment and rehabilitation are often seen (maybe cynically in some cases) as a route to redemption in the public mind.

What do you think?

More information on the diagnosis and treatment of ANGER.