Excessive anger is a sickness, not just an emotion

Australia's Nick Kyrgios reacts during a match against Spain's Rafael Nadal.

A few days ago, Nick Kyrgios, the talented but temperamental Australian tennis star, revealed he had depression.

“It was a lonely, dark place,” the 25-year-old told Sunday Telegraph. “I just lost joy for the game and I was spiralling out of control.”

Those who have followed Kyrgios’ career and have seen a bit of life were not surprised.

The signs of mental health issues were obvious in Kyrgios. On the one hand, he was charming and entertaining. He enlivened the game with underhand serves and between-the-leg shots. He’d jog to the courtside seats and ask a random spectator where he should serve. Next to the Big Three, Kyrgios is arguably the game’s biggest crowd-puller.

But Kyrgios also had a nasty streak that resulted in outrageous behaviour, like throwing a chair on court and insulting opponents, including legends like Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. Even as a Roger Federer fan, I cringed when I saw Kyrgios spit towards Nadal at Wimbledon one year. I felt for Nadal and also, in a different way, for Kyrgios. The boy needed help.

Now that Kyrgios has acknowledged his condition, it is progress for him, even though, in his statements about his challenges, he has not alluded to his past conduct. He is young. He is good at his sport. He deserves another chance. Besides, it is quite common in such cases that the bad behaviour is linked to childhood, or some other aspect of life, and the culprit is someone or something other than what the world sees.

Anger is an emotion that has its benefits. It can motivate a person to achieve more. Anger, our own or that of others, is even amusing at times. In sports and entertainment we wait for a Kyrgios to explode or Samuel Jackson to recite the Bible and empty his gun into the body of a double-crosser. The overt, unconvincing use of Hindi swear words in contemporary web shows has a lot of fans.

But excessive anger is actually a disease. It can destroy mental and physical health. The next thing you know you are unrecognisable to even yourself, a rabid creature privately snarling at everyone. Spend five minutes on the street or on Twitter, or look in the mirror, and you see that this condition afflicts millions. We are seething inside, carrying within us a dangerous cocktail of current stresses and childhood baggage.

Kyrgios has spoken about seeing a psychologist (one step removed from a psychiatrist, who is qualified to prescribe medicines). It is something most of us should do if we are experiencing chronic anger, regardless of ill-informed comments by the likes of Kangana Ranaut, who recently took a dig at Deepika Padukone by calling depression the disease of rich people.

At Rs 3000-5000 per session, therapy is not cheap. But it can save your sanity. In some cases, it can save your life. In India, there is a lot of talk about the need to change our attitude towards mental health. One step towards that is to look at therapy not as an expense but as an investment into your own well-being.