When I was in graduate school, a psychologist professor once told me that anger is an inside out word for depression. In other words, constant anger causes depression and on the reverse side, depression causes anger. How closely related do you think these two words are?

Well, sure. I don't think all depression is about being angry, but being angry at life will certainly depress a person.

No doubt the correlation is complex. My daughter is in a psychology specialist program, I'm sure if I posed the question to her I'd better pull up a chair.

get angry--punch an idiot--go to jail--become depressed.

In my case depression caused anger.....

usually alcohol caused both if i'm honest.

Good question, Grandpa. I think there's a definite link. The one causes or accompanies the other, both ways.

Alcohol exacerbates the mood changes.

Jim

I have several family members with depression. Medications work well for them, but we have all come to learn that when anger, snide remarks, negative comments, etc start to occur with regularity it is a sure sign that depression is knocking at the door. We've been at this a long time and usually a couple extra antidepressant pills for a couple of days will correct the situation and then it is back to regular prescription doses. My family members have said "You can have my prescriptions if you pry them from my cold dead hands".

Anger is a secondary response. . A defense mechanism most usually, if not always brought on by the original emotion of fear. If you take a deep honest look into your soul and figure out what you're afraid of. Then you'll know why you're angry.

The egghead was wrong.

The basis of anger is frustration. A good example is this Coronavirus in people are fearful of something they can not control, so that frustrates them, and from this arises anger.

The Bible has a perfect example in the first two brothers, Cain and Abel. Cain was frustrated over God not thinking he was wonderful, and from that came the fear he was wrong, and that brought about the anger. God warned him about not allowing this to brood in his heart, and what followed was the action of anger in people acting out, and this time it was the first murder.

Depression is a completely different psychosis as people who are depressed, turn inward. They then abuse themselves or others. Hatred does not appear in the psyche in most instances, but instead the remedy they want the depression over. They do this in drinking, doping, sex, to suicide, and that does include acting out sometimes in the engaging in violence, so law enforcement will shoot them. Homosexuals have a complete psychosis on depression in self abuse in high risk behaviors, hoping it will kill them and end the depression.

If you look at the counterpart of Trappers, the earth worship group, they are a group of Bob Barker types as all liberals are in thinking life has not treated them fairly. Barker could not have children, and this manifested his advocating cutting out the reproductive organs of pets. Once again it is the pattern of frustration, inner pain, which breeds hatred, and as most people will not hate themselves, they turn it outward and in safety join a group to destroy others.

Constant anger does not breed depression, as people enjoy anger and nurture it. It is an obsession which implodes outward out of fears. Depression does not breed anger. Depression is an emotional implosion of a silent scream.

Our daughter is a professor of clinical psychology at UW Milwaukee. Her Phyd involved lots of MIR's on brain reactions in males and females. Her research at Michigan State and now at UWM is centered on genetic and hormonal linkages for depression, phobias, anger and other extreme behaviors in human. Research has included many inmates that committed violent crimes and severely diagnosed depressed persons. There is mounting evidence that shows yes complexity but also that both are on the same bar if you will and also that hormonal influences and x chromosome cellular tissue have influences like in women depression is a symptom that is expressed as anger in men. The main focus of her research and her grad students is trying to find or locate the genetic link for depression. My wife's family has a lot of clinical depression and for multi generations.

Bryce

I bet there would be a lot less depression if these people brushed their teeth everyday, took a shower, combed their hair, and got some fresh air. To be honest.

There is some definite truth to the fear part.
Ive always had a very healthy fear of failure. I cant stand being mediocre at anything.
Fear of not accomplishing everything you wanted in life, or letting life pass you by.
Im relatively young and my body is falling apart from my past and my present life...that scares me deeply.
Fear of turning into someone you dont want to turn into.
Fear of alienating everyone you love, cuz youve seen it firsthand, or chased them off yourself.
Most of these can be worked through without an underlying mental issue, but some just cant shake the fact that we want to be more out of life and arent always sure how to accomplish that.
Therein lies the issue. Some of our brains never stop running. What could i be doing? What should i be doing? Is this right? Is that right? Constant second guessing and apprehension.
If you cant slow your mind down to smell the roses, youre gonna drive yourself nuts.. I have a horrible time focusing on what i dont have done instead of all the great things i have.
Irrational and goofy? Oh yeah, but you cant shut it off.

yeah,that'd really solve all our problems.i aint no pretty boy

That kind of outmoded thinking is why many sufferers of mental illness don't or can't get the help they need. It's ignorant.

Join the 21st century.

Jim

Anger causes a lot of things. The immune system for one is weakened. Possibly a chain reaction between stress and anger. I dealt with depression in my younger years, I learned that keeping everything bottled up inside because I wanted to be a nice guy was killing me, so a little outburst of anger seemed to snap or shock me out of inward hate. We have had several suicides in my family. My aunt killed her self, she had a 10 yr old daughter and 16 yr old son. She went thru years of depression and would often goes days without dressing and just wear a bathrobe all day. Her son went on to study psychology trying to understand why some living person wants to die and a dying person wants to live. He went on to become a forensic psychologist working in law and insurance companies. He had over 20 published papers before he died, and I'm not certain he ever figured out what could drive a mother to kill herself and leave 2 children.
Anger can be a release and let a little pressure off before a bigger explosion happens. There is a happy place between fight and flight if we can just learn that feeling.
Anger can get out of control if not checked. I knew a guy that was taking a load of hogs to market on a hot July morning and got stopped for not having any brake lights only about a mile from the buying station. He tried to get the officer to follow him to the station so he could get get the hogs out of the heat, but he wouldn't do it. The guy was so mad the rest of the day he died that evening from a heart attack. 40 yrs later his grandson got into it with a neighbor over a boundary line and he had a heart attack that night and was house bound for a year before he died.
Anger is an emotion that if left unchecked causes all kinds of health problems. I am not so sure anger is a problem so much in its self as much as the deeper causes such as stress and the other baggage we like to pack around that pops out and we identify it with the word anger.

Those are the thoughts of someone who's been fortunate enough never to have experienced clinical depression or real anxiety or had someone close to them experience it. Clinical depression is a very real and seriously debilitating condition. Contrary to what many of the uninformed believe, an individual suffering can't just tell themselves to buck up, stop feeling sorry for themselves and shake it off.

If Cain had only had a Facebook account.