Researchers have discovered that people with depression and anxiety who experienced a traumatic childhood often grow up to be angry adults, and the more severe the trauma, the more furious the adult. In addition to having an impact on social interactions and mental health, this makes treating depression and anxiety more challenging.
This work is presented at the European Congress of Psychiatry in Paris. More than 40% of patients with both anxiety and depression were shown to be prone to anger, according to earlier research. Comparatively, just 5 per cent of healthy controls have this problem. The ongoing Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety, which was created to look at the progression of depression and anxiety disorders over a number of years, provided the data for the current study.
Beginning in 2004, the study took participants between the ages of 18 and 65 and began to question them about their childhood; by the end of the study, 2276 people had taken part. Working over a period of years they were able to discover if there had been any history of childhood trauma, such as parental loss, parental divorce, or being placed in care. They also asked participants about neglect, and emotional, physical and sexual abuse. The participants were also later checked for a variety of psychiatric symptoms related to depression and anxiety, including their tendency to anger and how this manifested itself.