We've all spent time with them, people who are so obsessed with what they see as an injustice that they can think of and talk of nothing else. The cases we're most likely to encounter in our personal lives are those of divorcing or separating couples, and in extreme instances the hatred and the urge for revenge can seem to be a psychosis.
At work the obsessive hatreds I encounter are those of people in dispute with bureaucracy, usually a council, or with a former wife who, they say, is denying them their access to the children. In some of those latter cases the men seem close to the line between rational and irrational response.
This week I have read that psychiatrists in the US are seeking to have post-traumatic embitterment disorder recognised as a mental illness. The German psychiatrist who came up with the name, Dr Michael Linden, says people with this disorder are angry, pessimistic, aggressive, hopeless haters intent on revenge. He points to an estimate of one to two per cent of the population suffering this all-consuming bitterness, and says "they are almost treatment resistant - revenge is not a treatment".
I have met many people I am sure fall into this category, more than most, I would say, because of my work. In The Herald today I outline the sad case of a professional Hunter man who appears to have developed a mental illness years after he became obsessed with a perceived injustice. I don't know whether it was the obsession that caused the mental illness or the mental illness that caused the obsession, but on the face of it at least the mental illness in an apparent form followed the obsession.
Fortunately I have never been afflicted by a long-lived angry obsession, and I hope never to be, but I think I can imagine the progression. My response, at some point, would be to walk away from it all, advice I give, to no avail, to some of the people who approach me. Perhaps these people see walking away as defeat, even cowardice.
Have you had what is now called post-traumatic embitterment disorder? Have you seen its progression in someone else?
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