How schools could help kids manage their rage

On October 4, three teenagers walked into a nursing home in Delhi’s Kalindi Kunj and shot dead 55-year-old Javed Akhtar, a Unani medicine practitioner, due to a petty dispute over the settlement of a medical bill. “Lack of empathy brings success in the world today,” says Gurugram-based psychologist Praniti Chaddha. “If you don’t care what the other person thinks or how you are impacting them, then you can do what you want and take what you please and get beyond everyone else.” Dr Purnima Nagaraja, a psychiatrist in Hyderabad, asks, “Where is the voice of conscience when you are rewarded for committing murder?”
While anecdotes of teen violence hit the headlines every now and then, several studies show this is more than just a passing phase of a generation in angst, but a rather concerning trend that is growing. A 2023 study of 463 Indian school students in the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care found aggressive traits in over half.
While anger is not a new emotion, how it finds expression seems to have changed considerably. “We would get angry and maybe cry or complain, but would never think of murdering or hitting someone, or stealing something out of spite,” says Chaddha. “The moral compass that stops one from acting on emotions has broken down today.” Many believe the conscience takes a back seat due to desensitisation towards anger and its expressions.
Exposure to violence need not necessarily make a person violent, but it does normalise the sight and idea of violence. A 2006 study published in the journal Indian Pediatrics claimed that 69 per cent of students had witnessed violence in some form in real life, including 28 per cent who saw violence of a serious nature. Exposure to violence on the media was universal and bullying was prevalent.
More recently, two studies appearing in the 2024 issue of the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology link playing violent video games with a rise in aggressive thoughts, feelings and behaviour, both in laboratory settings and in real life. “Video games are more harmful when it comes to normalising violent thoughts and sights because, unlike TV, they are interactive, very engrossing and require the player to identify with the aggressor, and in some cases be the aggressor,” says Dr Nagaraja. “When I was in medical school, the first time we drew blood everyone but me fainted because both my parents were doctors and so I was used to the sight of blood.”
Another growing issue is the lack of healthy communication skills. When his mother harshly turned down his demand for a mobile phone of his own, Anirudh Sharma (name changed), a 12-year-old student in a Delhi school, threw a glass bowl at her in anger. In family counselling, it was discovered that the child wanted the phone to speak in some privacy to a friend who was not well. Unable to express this, he had vented his emotion through violence. “Punishment is common in families but speaking, explaining, sharing thoughts and shared decision-making are almost non-existent,” says Dr Nagaraja, who believes children learn to communicate in a healthy manner if they are encouraged to do so at home.
A 2023 study published in the Journal of Education and Health Promotion suggests a solution to the growing issues of uncontrolled rage. The study reveals that anger management classes for 128 Indian school students resulted in improved negotiation skills and lower anger levels. While some schools do try to teach social values, none lay special emphasis on how anger and other intense emotions can be reined in.
Not bad in itself, anger is a defence mechanism to perceptions of threat. Suppressing it, say mental health experts, is not at all healthy as it eventually spills out. Not being able to understand anger, many end up releasing it through violence. The healthiest way towards anger management is learning how to communicate emotions verbally and how to introspect deep enough to know what is actually triggering the emotion. After all, it is the trigger that needs a resolution, not the emotion.
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