Intermittent Explosive Disorder

Etiology, Assessment, and Treatment

Emil F. Coccaro, Michael S. McCloskey

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780128138588
• eBook ISBN: 9780128138595
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Clinical Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Intermittent Explosive Disorder: Etiology, Assessment, and Treatment provides a complete overview on this disorder, focusing on its etiology, how the disorder presents, and the clinical assessment and treatment methods currently available. The book presents the history of the disorder, discusses the rationale for its inclusion in the DSM, and includes diagnostic considerations, comorbidity, epidemiology, intervention, and how treatments have evolved. Each section is bolstered by clinical case material that provides real-world context and clinical lessons on how to distinguish intermittent explosive disorder from other presentations of aggression.- Synthesizes the current knowledge on the etiology, assessment and treatment of intermittent explosive disorder- Covers epidemiology and future directions- Discusses cross-cultural differences in anger expression and how this impacts diagnosis- Explores age-related and developmental considerations in diagnosis and expression- Assesses pharmacological, psychosocial, and combined treatment therapies

Part I

Aggression and IED: Basic Aspects

Chapter One

Developmental Trajectories of Aggression and Other Problematic Behaviors Associated With IED^☆

Richard E. Tremblay*^,†; Cédric Galera^‡; Massimiliano Orri^§; Sylvana M. Côté*^,‡ * University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada
^† University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
^‡ University of Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France
^§ McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada

Abstract

Longitudinal studies of behavior development from early childhood systematically show that the behavior problems we observe during adolescence and adulthood were present in early childhood. In fact, the frequency of physical aggressions, loss of control, and hyperactive and impulsive behaviors are at their highest during early childhood. One of the main tasks of childhood is to learn to control one's behavior. We suggest that the next step in understanding the developmental origins of IED, would involve using longitudinal studies that have assessed large cohorts of children throughout their development, to assess their IED during adulthood. These studies would help trace the pathway from pregnancy to IED in adulthood, and thus identify preventive interventions that can be implemented from pregnancy onwards.

Keywords

Physical aggression; Development; Adolescence; Childhood; Early childhood; Prevention; IED

Contents

• Historical Perspective
• Developmental Trajectories of Physical Aggression From Early Childhood to Old Age
• The Development of Other Forms of Aggression
• The Early Development of Hyperactivity-Impulsivity
• The Early Development of Irritability and its Link to Suicidality
• Conclusions
• References

Historical Perspective

In their invitation to write the present chapter, the volume editors wrote: “We very much want to have a chapter in our book on Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED) covering the topic of ‘Developmental Trajectories of Aggression’ because we believe that many of the children you and your colleagues study grow up to have IED.”

In making this request the volume editors were following in the steps of Aristotle who wrote, some 2600 years ago, that: He who considers things in their first growth and origin, … will obtain the clearest view of them. (Politics, Book 1 chap 2). Similarly, 19th century investigators of animal and human behavior explicitly stated that understanding a given behavior required the description of that behavior's development from conception onwards (Cairns, 1983). But not all scientists agreed! One of the fiercest debates concerning the origins of species in the 1820s, described at the time by Goethe as a volcano eruption, was sparked by the decision of a French naturalist, Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, to compare the development of fetuses rather than continue comparing only the anatomy of adult animals (Appel, 1987). Some 30 years later, Charles Darwin cited this early work on the differences in the development of fetuses as one of the best support for his theory (Darwin, 1859, p. 409). In his history of developmental psychology, Robert Cairns (1983) reminded his readers that the father of experimental psychology in the 19th century, Wilhelm Wundt, rejected the developmental perspective arguing that the adult mind could be understood independently from the mind of the child.

This refusal to take a developmental perspective has largely prevailed in the study of aggressive behavior over the 20th century. Aggressive behavior problems during adulthood, as well as during adolescence, were generally studied without reference to childhood aggressive behavior problems.

One debate on the developmental origins of aggression among humans reached its peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It centered on the nature vs nurture origin of aggression. Konrad Lorenz's book ‘On Aggression’ (Lorenz, 1966) was based on Lorenz's observations of animal behavior and concluded that humans, like all other animals, inherit an ‘aggressive instinct’ which could lead to the destruction of humanity. The nurture side of the debate was highlighted by the social psychologist Albert Bandura in his book ‘Aggression: A social learning perspective’ published 7 years later (Bandura, 1973). Bandura's book was based on studies of children in a laboratory situation where they were shown to spontaneously imitate an adult hitting a Bobo doll. Bandura concluded from these observations: “People are not born with preformed repertories of aggressive behaviors; they must learn them in one way or another” (Bandura, 1973, p. 61). His work led to numerous studies that were partly driven by the hypothesis that children were becoming more aggressive because of violence on television (e.g., Eron, Walder, Toigo, & Lefkowitz, 1963; Huesmann, Lagerspetz, & Eron, 1984).

The social learning hypothesis of aggression essentially dominated the fields of criminology, education, child psychiatry, psychology, public health, and sociology. For example, in 1993 the US National Academy of Science Panel ‘On understanding and control of violent behavior’ concluded: “Modern Psychological perspectives emphasize that aggressive and violent behaviors are learned responses to frustration, that they can also be learned as instruments for achieving goals, and that the learning occurs by observing models of such behavior. Such models may be observed in the family, among peers, elsewhere in the neighborhood, through the mass media …” (Reiss & Roth, 1993, p. 7). As recently as 2002, the World Health Organization's ‘World Report on Violence and Health’ concluded: “The majority of young people who become violent are adolescent-limited offenders who, in fact, show little or no evidence of high levels of aggression or other problem behaviors during their childhood” (World Health Organization, 2002, p. 31). They attributed this conclusion to the following source: ‘Youth violence: a report of the Surgeon General. Washington, DC United States Department of Health and Human Services’ (US Surgeon General, 2001).

Developmental Trajectories of Physical Aggression From Early Childhood to Old Age

In the last half of the 20th century, there was a strong interest in the stability of aggressive behavior. In one of the most often cited reviews, Olweus (1979) concluded that aggressive behavior was as stable as intelligence because of a high correlation between assessments at two points in time in 16 samples of males. Two studies starting toward the end of infancy also indicated that stability of physical aggression was high during the preschool years (Cummings, Iannotti, & Zahn-Waxler, 1989; Keenan & Shaw, 1994). However, it is important to remember that a high correlation between two assessments only indicates that individuals retain a relatively consistent placement within the group at two points in time. Correlational analyses of aggressive behavior with longitudinal data do not provide information on intraindividual change in aggressive behavior over time.

In 1984 we initiated the first large prospective longitudinal study of boys’ physical aggressions from kindergarten onwards. The study made annual assessments of a sample of 1031 boys from 53 schools of low socioeconomic neighborhoods in Montreal (Canada). Results surprisingly showed that the mean frequency of physical aggressions decreased from early childhood to adolescence. ...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Contributors
• Preface
• Part I: Aggression and IED: Basic Aspects
• Part II: Etiology and Correlates
• Part III: Evaluation and Treatment
• Index