Anger Management Flashcards
Dealing with offending behaviour: anger management is a CBT approach conducted inside or outside prisons over a few days or weeks often with a group of offenders. It may be a part of a wider therapy.
The short term aim of anger management is to reduce anger and make the prison environment less violent. For example change the way role think about overcrowding.
The longer term aim is of rehabilitation and to reduce recidivism.
Key aims are:
Cognitive restructuring: greater self awareness and control over cognition dimensions of anger
Regulation of arousal : learning to control the physiological state
Behavioural strategies: problem solving skills and assertiveness.
The stress innoculation model is proposed by novaco. The three key steps are
Cognitive preparation: learn about anger and analyse own responses to situations that provoke anger
Skill acquisition: teach self regulation, cognitive flexibility and relaxation.
Application training: role plays of previous experiences, real world practice.
Jane Ireland assessed the effectiveness of anger management therapy with young male offenders. A baseline measure was made assessing pre-intervention anger and each participant was assessed by prison officers. An experimental group of 50 took part whilst an extra 37 were put on the waiting list. Eight weeks after the treatment all participants were re-assessed using the questionnaire and also assessed by police officers. The study found significant improvements in the experimental
group and no changes in the control group.
Anger management programmes have been proven to be successful. Researchers reported 75% improvement rates based on meta analyses which used anger control as part of the therapy. They found that having an anger control element was significantly related to amount of improvement. However not all studies had been so positive. Some researchers cited 5 meta analytic studies which showed only moderate benefits of anger management programmes. The fact that not all studies produced similar results raises the issue of reliability. If the results are not reliable it would then be wrong to use such findings to prove the usefulness and effectiveness of these programmes
Another weakness is that there are methodological issues with the research conducted. There are difficulties with making comparisons due to the variability of anger management programmes. Some last only a few days whilst some span over a few years. Also some courses are run by psychologists whilst others are run by less experienced prison staff. Further variability includes different kinds of offender and different programmes which makes comparability difficult. Another issues is the way anger is assessed. One way is by using self report measure or observations by prison staff both of which are subject to bias. Some patients may portray themselves in a more positive light after treatment as they want to be helpful in showing the treatment worked. This therefore suggests that if there are methodological issues with the research conducted reliability is questioned and all the studies showing that the programmes are effective may not be reliable
In addition to this there are also limitations of anger management programmes. CBT isn’t for everyone some people don’t like having to reflect on their styles of thinking and find it difficult to make the effort involved with changing attitudes and behaviours. An alternative is drama based courses which are more engaging and less reliant on verbal ability
A number of these courses have proven to be successful. A way to prevent dropout is to assess readiness to change before the start of the programme rather than waste time with individuals who won’t benefit. It is suggested that anger management programmes are better as a wider therapeutic approach and so they should probably be used more in this way to maximise effectiveness.
