CNN Story: IED

Intermittent Explosive Disorder is a recently recognized psychological illness that leads to outbursts out of proportion to the events at hand.

I heard some people discussing this on the radio, and their basic take was that this is b.s. and just an excuse for people who don't handle feelings that are common to us all.

I'd have to hear more about it to know what to make of it, but on the face of it I don't know why it couldn't be a real illness. And I'm convinced the brain and nervous system can malfunction in almost any way possible.

I suppose one of the problems may be that there's no blood or brain test that determines a physiological problem exists.

Well, if it is discovered that 75% of the people with the disorder have significantly better management of such outbursts when taking anti-depressants, or some other drug, then it seems worth having the diagnosis.

What do you think? It is easy to make fun of this one -- for example, I can only hope they come up with an Intermittent Food Ingestion Disorder that can cure my obesity with a pill. Whose to say whether such a thing is a disorder requiring medication?