Failure: Anger Management

On July 9, 2003, Douglas Williams walked out of an ethics and sensitivity course and gathered a load of weapons from his truck. He headed for the Lockheed Martin plant where he worked, shot and killed five people, wounded nine others, and then killed himself.

In 2001, Williams had completed two weeks of professional anger-management counseling and was allowed to return to work. He was considered to be a changed person.

[Data from “Factory Killer Had a Known History of Anger and Racial Taunts,” by David M. Halbfinger July 10, 2003, The New York Times]

Ron Artest, a basketball player with the Indiana Pacers, was ordered to participate in anger-management classes.

Psychologists were not surprised that previous counseling had failed.

"Anger-management classes, I think, are a Band-Aid; they allow people to feel they've done something, but they haven't had any kind of real treatment," said Dr. Ray DiGiuseppe, a psychologist at St. John's University, where Artest played college basketball. "We have no organized treatment, no idea whether counselors doing the teaching have training in mental health. We're operating under this delusion that we're helping people when we may be just continuing the violence."

[From “Anger Management May Not Help at All,” by Benedict Carey, November 24, 2004, The New York Times]