CBT

• Anger management

  A form of cognitive behavioural treatment in which (violent) offenders are encouraged to recognise what triggers their anger, as well as being taught techniques to help them regulate their behaviour
• Anger management approach


  Assumes that anger is one possible cause of offending behaviour
• Aaron Beck's Cognitive Triad


  • Beck proposed that good mental health is the result of rational/prosocial thinking
  • He argued that there are common irrational/anti-social beliefs that explain the way people act
  • People who commit crimes have irrational/anti-social beliefs about the world eg schema of personal entitlement or self-dominance, misinterpret social cues as potential threats
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

  • Anger management training is an application of CBT
  • CBT is a type of therapy used to treat many different forms of mental health disorders
  • Therapist will explore beliefs that are linked to their criminal involvement - the job is to identify potential influencing beliefs/schemata used in their reaction to events
  • Help the patient by challenging what they think (belief aspect of the therapy)
  • Help the patient change the way they act to improve the symptoms they are having (consequence part of the therapy)
  • Based on the understanding that the way we think affects how we feel, and how we feel influences how we behave
  • If a person changes the way they think (belief), their behaviour should also change (consequence)
  • If they change a negative/irrational belief to a positive/rational one, then there will be positive consequences
• Anger management

  • Assumes that the offenders inability to control their anger is the root cause of offending
  • Raymond Novaco (1975) suggests that some offenders are more likely to see certain situations as threatening and stressful, and this leads them to react aggressively or violently, rather than rationally
  • The offender's appraisal of a situation acts as a trigger for anger, and so is cognitive in nature
  • From a behaviourist perspective, anger is reinforced by the offender's feelings of control that anger gives them in that situation
  • Therefore, we can see that anger results from cognitive and behavioural problems, so treatment needs to tackle both
• Anger management treatment

  1. Cognitive preparation

  2. Skill acquisition

  3. Application and Practice
• Cognitive preparation

  • Working with a trained therapist, the offender reflects on situations that have triggered their anger in the past and considers whether they could have reacted differently
  • Eg an individual who typically becomes violent if someone makes physical contact with them at a busy bar is encouraged to redefine the situation as non-threatening (by rationalising that the person may have been pushed themselves)
  • In this way, events that may have been 'flashpoints' in the past are gradually perceived more rationally
• Skill acquisition

  • Offenders use a total range of behavioural techniques to help them cope more effectively with anger provoking situations
  • These may be quite simple steps, eg counting to 10 to temper our reaction to a stressful event
  • This kind of self-talk promotes calmness rather than aggression, and is likely to become an automatic response if practised regularly
  • Some behavioural strategies deal with the physiology of anger, such as meditation and deep breathing
  • The aim is to control one's emotions rather than being controlled by them
• Application and Practice

  • The therapist devises situations in which the offender is able to demonstrate the skills they have been taught
  • One way this is achieved is by reconstructing events when the offender lost control in the past
  • Eg the offender and the therapist could simulate the condition of queueing at a bar for a drink
  • Eg by deliberately provoking the offender by pushing them from behind whilst 'at the bar'
  • This is to test whether the new techniques have been internalised
  • H/E it's a roleplay and the offender knows it's not real
• Jane Ireland (2004) Investigated anger management within an institutional setting
• Procedure in Ireland's study

  1. Offenders were randomly allocated to 1 of 2 conditions

  2. One group received a cognitive behavioural anger management treatment program, similar to that described above

  3. The second group received no treatment until later, acting as a waitlist control group

  4. The treatment group were given 12 sessions of anger management and there were 3 measures of progress

  5. These were an interview and a questionnaire for participants and a behaviour checklist completed by the prison staff

  6. Data for all of these measures was gathered two weeks before and eight weeks after treatment
• Individual differences in effectiveness of anger management

  • Anger management works best with people who have a history of violent offending
  • Offenders who do not display 'treatment of readiness' are unlikely to benefit from therapy
  • Unless offenders admit there is a problem and accept the need for change, then anger management has limited effectiveness
• Strength of anger management

  • It addresses different aspects of offending behaviour - the therapy is an interdisciplinary approach that works on a number of different levels: cognitive (phase 1), behavioural (phase 2), and social (phase three) during role-play
  • This acknowledges the fact that offending is a complex psychological activity that requires an eclectic approach to treatment
• Weakness of anger management

  • The short term nature of the study - Ireland's investigation assessed after 8 weeks, may not be sufficient time to realistically evaluate the effectiveness of similar programs, especially once an offender is released from the institutional setting
  • Questionable whether Ireland's study is a good indicator of how effective anger management would be in the long term
• Anger management may be seen as a form of social control