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June 25, 2006
Road Rage! $#^&*@#
Today’s column in the Ventura County Star is a reaction to IED, the newest in personal responsibility avoidance – this one a medical excuse for what most of us call road rage.
As always, your response is encouraged. The exchange of ideas has been terrific and I continue to learn a tremendous amount from those kind enough to read (the column or this blog) and react. Thank you.
Unorthodox cure works
Scott Harris
Ventura County Star
June 25, 2006
The geniuses at Harvard Medical School, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, studied 9,000 people and have come up with a new name for what is commonly known as road rage – Intermittent Explosive Disorder or IED. They estimate that 16 million people nationwide are afflicted with IED, or what our mothers used to call rudeness or bad temper. On average, those afflicted with IED can expect to fly into a rage 43 times in their lifetime (usually beginning around age 14) and will cause $1,300 damage to other people’s personal property.
Not surprisingly, Dr. Emil Cocaro, chairman of psychiatry at the University of Chicago and one the enablers / authors of this report, dismisses the idea that the formerly termed “road rage” is simply an inexcusable outburst, insisting “ […] that there’s a biology and cognitive science to this.” Even less surprising, but more concerning, is that Dr. Cocaro says the symptoms can be treated with anti-depressants or anger-management therapy.
IED is simply the latest in a series of bad personal decisions and poor behaviors that are now deemed involuntary conditions or official diseases. Are you too fat, too skinny, a pedophile, sleeping around, or beating your spouse? Not to worry. Somewhere in America, right now, a group of people are working on your behalf, relieving you of responsibility for your actions and placing it on “society.”
Not to be cynical, but could there be a money motive to IED? Let’s follow the trail.
It starts with a group of researchers identifying a trait in a group of people that many of us find undesirable. They apply for a grant (the dollars begin) from the government or a group like the National Institute of Mental Health. They study thousands of people and determine yep, some folks get a little pissy on the freeways and some go further than that. Not content with passé (and unprofitable) terms such as “bad behavior” or “character flaw,” they attach a medical name to the acts. Now we really have some traction …
We’ll need physicians who specialize in IED, enriching doctors to diagnose and treat a previously nonexistent illness, furthering the IED money train. Health insurance will be required to cover it (explain to me again why insurance costs are so high?) Pharmaceutical companies will develop new wonder drugs, which doctors will prescribe and pharmacists will sell. It will quickly be categorized as a disability, which will bring in the ADA and the full weight and expense of federal bureaucracy
And, we’re not done yet. A community of advocacy groups and lobbyists, smelling money and publicity and usually led by the ACLU, will materialize around this new disenfranchised group of “road ragers.” Spokespeople will show up on the weekend talk shows, discussing how difficult their lives are and how insensitive the rest of us are for not acknowledging the burden they carry – as they endanger lives of drivers everywhere. And now for the topper: attorneys will have a new way to get their clients off. “Yes your honor, my client acknowledges running the Johnson family off the road, killing three innocent people. However, he is afflicted with IED and not responsible for his actions. As a matter of fact, my client is a party to my class action suit against the federal government which refuses to properly fund IED research.”
Uh, oh. Now I’m coming down with a brand new malady: disorder avoidance syndrome, a severe reaction to the ridiculous trend of labeling every human weakness, character flaw and bad personality trait as a disease. When I used to be “well,” I actually believed that it was our duty as adults to overcome negative and destructive impulses and to teach our children to do the same.
There is a radical cure for disorder avoidance syndrome – personal responsibility. It’s not recognized by the ADA, understood by the government, administered by doctors, cured by drugs, supported by the ACLU, allowed as a defense by judges, or taught in public schools. However, if you have a chance – take a dose.
Scott Harris, of Thousand Oaks, is executive director of Golden Again, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization founded to Bring Accountability to Sacramento. Scott can be reached at scott@goldenagain.com. His blog can be seen at blogs.venturacountystar.com/vcs/scottharris/ and starting July 29th you can also hear Scott every Saturday, 3:00 on KVTA 1520 AM and KKZZ 1590 AM.
Comments
Great article. There’s a money trail, no doubt, but besides professors having to publish for the sake of publishing which leads to these “insights,” I think the bigger motivator is just an increasing lack of self-responsibility by our society as a whole. Can’t control yourself, it’s a disease, so don’t worry about that – it’s not your fault. Can’t motivate yourself to get a job, no problem – we have welfare for that. Accidentally got pregnant, don’t trouble yourself with that – we have abortion to fix that little mishap. The men and women that founded this country had self-respect, responsibility, and common sense. Can you imagine the founders of our great country tolerating this junk? Freedom comes with great personal responsibility.
RE: Sally Kosoff-NAMI
It appears that Sally Kosoff has been absent in applying the Mission Statement " ...to eradicate the Stigmatization of Mental illness, which interferences with the treatment and recovery, and to educate families and others." It was in the not too distance past where Ventura County was fined nearly $25 million dollars, later reduced to $13 million, for a massive billing fraud. Ventura County used tobacco money to pay the fine. That money was never supposed to be used in that way. She complains that a " desperate need" for more funds. Well that particular year, many County and Police programs were cut , while Ventura Country Mental Health was bailed out. Now NAMI needs more money again.
That always seems to be the cry of Ventura County Mental Health proponents...more money. Well I have a solution for you. There is an estimated $40 Billion a year of Health care Fraud in this Country alone in a year. That right... $40 Billion! Insurance companies have shown psychiatry has the worst track record of all. Maybe it's time you, NAMI, take some responsible in this area and police it on your own. Any Fraud uncovered, a percentage of it could be be used to fund, under your control, what you wish. That way you are cleaning up Mental Health Fraud and Abuse in our backyard in Ventura County. NAMI, which is mostly make up of family members of the mentally ill,could have more say in the treatment of it's own.That's a good thing and you would truly accomplishing the purpose of your Mission statement.
Derrick Synovec
Great piece -- well done!! Could be applied to a lot of government behavior. Think up a new problem and then through money at it -- results are a minor concern because you are "trying".
I thoroughly enjoyed your writing concerning IED. You clearly stated all of the things that I have felt about those studies but couldn't verbalize.
I am now waiting for the study that finds the primary responsibility for IED to be not with the supposed sufferer, but with the provocateur.
Anger is an emotion that has always been with us. It is no different than the other emotions we manifest, love, sadness, etc.: each one has to be felt and displayed appropriately. Anger is natural. Even the 'gods' become angry.
Anger, as an emotion, is not to be relegated to the category of a syndrome or a psychological disorder. There is nothing abnormal about anger. It is something to be expressed appropriately to maintain one's mental health.
When a driver cuts me off or turns in front of me without signaling, I yell at them-of course they are far away and can't hear me-and my wife says, "Leave them alone, they didn't do anything to you." Of course they didn't, at least not directly, but I was raised to show respect
for the rules and obey the law. When another person blatantly ignores or flaunts their purposeful disregard for those rules, I feel it is a direct affront to me. It makes me angry.
I was taught not to crowd ahead in line, whether at the movies or waiting to serve myself at a buffet. Nowadays, everyone wants to be first, to arrive ahead of everyone else, to pass all of the slow people. There are drivers that pass everything on the road ahead of
them and if you don't get out of their way you suffer their wrath. There are other drivers that 'exit jump', getting off the freeway only to enter again immediately just to get ahead of a few cars, not realizing that they are actually slowing the flow of traffic. It makes me angry.
Do I qualify as suffering JAE, justifiable anger expression, or do the bad drivers qualify for ESD, extreme stupidity disorder? Do I qualify for a government grant to study this? No? That makes me angry too!
Thanks, I needed that. Now back to the Anger Management classes...
Posted by: Mel Knowles at June 27, 2006 07:54 AMIntermittent Explosive Disorder may be a cause of Road Rage, but that's not all the disorder is.
It's been in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for years, to describe rages that appears to come out of nowhere and can be quite destructive. People who are calm one moment and throwing a chair through a window the next moment might be diagnosed with Intermittent Explosive Disorder. Does that mean they are not at fault for throwing the chair? Of course not. Does it mean they may need some help learning how to calm themselves when they are overcome with rage, to protect themselves and others? Quite likely.
Posted by: at August 6, 2006 07:27 PM
Kudos for bringing this latest erosion of personal responsibility to light.
Posted by: Steve at June 25, 2006 10:00 AMAs I see it, there's three problems with this trend:
1. Increasing reliance on the government to protect us from ourselves.
2. increasing litigation to make someone else pay for my bad mistakes or misfortune.
3. Increasing wariness on the part of businesses to simply sell products (like hot coffee or spray paint) unless you show i.d., sign a waiver, and read the 100-page list of warnings.