Anger as a mental illness

We don't hesitate to classify chronic sadness as an illness. Depression is a serious disorder, resulting in many deaths and what is almost as bad, lives with all the joy emptied out. Chronic anxiety is also an illness. Anxiety shortens lives and makes most events fear-producing (not that there are not genuine reasons for anxiety at times). Chronic anger, however, has never been classified as a "mental illness", though it probably costs more lives than the first two together. It has broken many marriages and families, stressed people to the maximum and ruined their health. Why don't we see this as an illness deserving serious study and treatment?

It occurs to me that we as a nation (USA) see anger generally as a "good thing". We live in denial as to its toxic qualities and life-damaging effects. We love movies in which the good guy, having been suitably mistreated in the early part of the film, rises in righteous indignation and smites the bad guys in bloody and exciting ways. Consider the "Die Hard" movies, the movies starring Charles Bronson or Arnold Schwarzenegger or... there are really too many to enumerate. I like them too. When Dirty Harry lets 'em have it, I feel the same rush of satisfaction that the rest of the audience does. Our TV shows are full of it (anger, I mean), and we all watch them.

It's a way of life for us. We seem to need the thrill of knowing we are absolutely RIGHT and justified in whatever we do to take vengeance on the wicked. I find the same reaction in myself much of the time. In real life (whatever that may be) I'm rarely certain that I'm right. I'm possessed by the nagging feeling that perhaps the other person(s) may be right, that maybe I've missed something or misunderstood something. So when the time comes that I KNOW they are wrong and I'm RIGHT, I love the rush of adrenaline that spikes my righteous wrath. There's a thrill to "letting it go", even though I know it's bad for me and bad for relationships.

Maybe I don't want to see chronic anger as an illness. Where would we be without it? Would we still belong to Great Britain? Would we be able to stand up for ourselves and fight back without it? We as a nation were founded on rebellion and righteous wrath. Many of us espouse Christianity or Buddhism, which certainly do not encourage revenge or anger, but that doesn't even slow us down; in some cases it may make us worse because it makes us RIGHTER.

So I'm wondering if the reason we don't recognize chronic anger as the sickness it is, is because we like it too much.