Revista de Psicologia e Psicoterapia
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Psychoeducative Programme in Anger Management

Michael D Callifrona

Chronic uncontrolled anger (often characteristic of dysfunctional families) becomes toxic and produces changes both in the personality traits as well as in the biological substrate. Anger can minimize mental control over behaviour since it interrupts the function of the frontal lobes and detrimentally affects health, family, work-school, financial status, friends, law, personality and values. On the other hand research conducted with fMRI, has shown a close relationship between anger and coronary atherosclerosis, ventricular arrhythmias, morbidity, and mortality. Two main brain targets of chronic anger with obvious changes are amygdala and hippocampus. In this paper we present the results of an anger control psychoeducative programme, based on person centred and group centred principles. It is developed around the hypothesis that anger is an alarm signal indicating an unmet need. Group members learn to bind anger situations with human needs. Among discussed subjects in small groups are personal anger experiences, family influences, physical relaxation methods, inner distorted beliefs, body signs and the psychobiological cycle of anger. Symbolization tools are also used. As a measurement tool we used self administered STPI (State-Trait Personality Inventory), which includes eighty questions designed to measure transitory and dispositional anger, anxiety, curiosity and depression in a four-level Likert scale. This is a twelve months (45 hours) programme divided into two phases (awareness and therapy) It was applied in three groups (Σn=30, 2011-2014). Personality anger traits showed a highly significant difference between the beginning and end of this paired blind trial (p<0.001). Programme and results are presented and discussed.