There is some debate as to whether humans are really designed to cope with the ever-increasing social, physical and psychological pressures inherent in modern city life. While our days are becoming increasingly hectic, the list of new afflictions grows longer. Alongside the likes of childhood obesity or diabetes, there are myriad mental ailments creeping into the canon of modern psychology.
The latest such affliction now being taken seriously by mental-health specialists is intermittent explosive disorder (IED), a syndrome where the sufferer displays outbursts of rage and anger highly disproportionate to the situation. Latest research claims that up to 16 million Americans may suffer from the condition.
A US study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry attributes instances of road rage and aggressive outbursts to what it claims to be a vastly under-diagnosed condition. Last month's 'Bus Uncle' saga, in which a Hong Kong man berated another on a public bus, is one indication why mental-health professionals are taking a serious look at a modern-day condition that they say has been grossly underestimated.
Researchers from Harvard Medical School and Chicago University carried out a study between 2001 and 2003 in which they surveyed 9,282 adults in the US. They found that 7.3 per cent of the population could be classed as having IED because they suffered from three or more outbursts of impulsive, exaggerated aggression in one year. According to the report, the disorder typically first appears in adolescence at about the age of 14. Some might attribute such outbursts to the hormonal rush that affects us all, but researchers appear increasingly certain that the condition is real and widespread.
'The critical thing is that people who don't have this disorder aren't blowing up frequently, and are not getting into trouble for it,' said Emil Coccaro, chairman of psychiatry at the University of Chicago's medical school, and co-author of the study.
In other words, there's a difference between smashing a plate in frustration and destroying an entire room. Diagnosed cases have ranged from road rage to spousal abuse, although researchers don't uniformly imply that anyone who has done such things suffers from the condition. But the study's finding of 16 million sufferers is a number greater than for those afflicted by better-known mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Dr Coccaro said such under-diagnosis was partly due to confusion over what IED's criteria should have been in the 1980s.
'This was because IED was conceptualised as a kind of Incredible Hulk syndrome - the person is basically fine until they go absolutely berserk,' he said. 'This is not what people are really like. People who have aggressive problems have big outbursts, and then in between, they have these smaller rumblings, which is what ruled them out in the old days.'