12 - Anger Management Flashcards
What is the purpose of anger management?
Cognitive factors trigger the emotional arousal which usually precedes aggressive acts. In some people, anger is too quick to surface, especially in situations that they perceive to be threatening but actually are not.
In CBT the individual is taught how to recognise when they are losing control, and encouraged to develop techniques which bring about conflict- resolution without resorting to violence.
What are the 3 stages of anger management?
1) Cognitive Preparation
2) Skill Acquisition
3) Application Practice
What happens in cognitive preparation?
Offender:
learns to identify the triggers for their anger
reflects on events in the past when they became angry
considers if the way that they interpreted those events was rational.
Therapist’s role - help the offender redefine the situation as non-threatening.
What happens in skill acquisition?
Introduced to a range of techniques and skills to help them handle anger-provoking situations more rationally.
Techniques could be cognitive (positive self-talk to encourage calmness); behavioural (assertiveness training to communicate more effectively); or physiological (methods of relaxation and meditation).
What happens in application practice?
Opportunity to practise the skills they learned in the skill acquisition stage in a carefully monitored environment.
Role plays are often used to re-enact scenarios that in the past led to the offender committing an act of violence. The offender must take this seriously and see the scenario as real, and the therapist has to be brave and ‘wind up’ the offender.
Successful negotiation of the role play will be met with positive reinforcement from the therapist.
What are the positives of anger management?
Multidisciplinary approach (cognitive, behavioural and social elements are included) which acknowledges that offending is a complex social and psychological behaviour, and any attempt to address it must include these different elements. Unlike behaviour modification, anger management tries to get to the root cause of offending behaviour (the thought processes that lead to anger/violence), rather than focusing on superficial surface behaviour.
What are the negatives of anger management?
Whilst anger management may have a noticeable effect on the conduct of offenders in the short-term, there is little research support for the claim that it reduces recidivism in the long-term. Role-plays may be too artificial and do not allow offenders to hone their anger management techniques sufficiently for them to work in the real world.
Assumption that anger causes offending may be false. Many crimes, such as financial crime, are not motivated by anger. Even murder is not always motivated by anger, Harold Shipman murdered over 215 of his patients during his time working as a GP, and his motivation was to alleviate their suffering.
Anger management programmes are expensive to run as they require a highly trained specialist who is used to dealing with violent offenders. Many prisons do not have the resources to run such programmes.
Success of anger management is based on commitment of those who participate, and this is a problem if prisoners are uncooperative or apathetic.
