Childhood trauma linked to anger in adulthood

Key takeaways:

• Childhood trauma was associated with adulthood anger.
• Greater trauma was associated with greater odds of anger in adulthood.
• All types of trauma were associated with borderline personality traits.

Adults who experienced trauma in childhood were more likely to have anger issues, with more severe trauma increasing the likelihood of anger problems, findings presented at the European Congress of Psychiatry showed.

“There is surprisingly little research on anger in general,” Nienke de Bles, MSc, a PhD student at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands, said in a related press release. “The Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety is a well-established study which has produced a lot of good scientific data, but there has not been any significant work looking at the data on childhood trauma and seeing if this is linked to increased levels of anger. We have now found that there is a link.”

De Bles and colleagues used data collected as part of the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (NESDA). NESDA participants completed a Childhood Trauma Interview at baseline and a series of questionnaires to assess their anger and personality traits at follow-up 4 years later.

Among 2,276 participants, there was a dose-response association between childhood trauma and anger in adulthood.

Analyses by childhood trauma type revealed that all trauma except sexual abuse were linked to greater trait anger and a greater prevalence of anger attacks and antisocial personality traits, the researchers wrote.

Additionally, all types of childhood trauma were associated with borderline personality traits, while all trauma except sexual abuse was associated with antisocial personality traits.

Notably, people with anxiety or depression who had experienced emotional neglect or physical or psychological abuse were 1.3 to 2 times more likely to have anger problems in adulthood, according to the release.

“We believe that it should be standard practice to ask depression and anxiety sufferers about anger and past trauma, even if the patient is not exhibiting current anger,” de Bles said in the release. “Psychiatric treatments for past trauma may differ to treatment for current depression, so the psychiatrist needs to try to understand the cause so that they can offer the correct treatment to each patient.”

References:

• De Bles N, et al. Childhood trauma and anger in adults with and without depressive and anxiety disorders. Presented at: European Congress of Psychiatry; March 25-28, 2023; Paris.
• The more traumatic the childhood, the angrier the adult. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/983655. Published March 25, 2023. Accessed March 29, 2023.