Rutgers' Mike Rice Rage: Bad Behavior or a Disorder?

Throwing balls, kicking players, shouting gay slurs -- all of these outbursts caught on videotape of Rutgers basketball coach Mike Rice reveal the abusive nature of uncontrollable anger.

Rice was fired this week, and faculty and alumni have been in an uproar. But was his angry performance during a men's basketball team practice last year just bad boy behavior or something more diagnosable?

"There is a misconception that getting anger out helps you calm down, but ironically, it makes you more angry," said Camp Hill, Pa., psychologist Pauline Wallin, author of the 2004 book "Taming Your Inner Brat."

Watch more on this story on "20/20: Losing It!" Friday at 10 ET

"The angrier you get, it gets increasingly harder as you are pumping more adrenaline, and there is more energy to discharge. Yelling and screaming don't get you calmer, they rile you up."

The university's reputation is still stinging from the 2010 suicide of gay student Tyler Clemente, whose roommate had secretly videotaped the freshman having sex and was convicted of a hate crime..

Today, a group of 13 faculty and alumni demanded that university president Robert Barchi resign, because it took months for him to take action.

Barchi first viewed the video in November and sent Rice to anger management counseling. He fired the coach on April 3, when the video again resurfaced.

Kevin Rivoli/AP Photo

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Even New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie weighed in on Rice, applauding the firing in the New York Times: "The way these young men were treated by the head coach was completely unacceptable and violates the trust parents put in Rutgers University."

Experts say the most common form of aggressive anger is rage, which is a psychological and physiological response to a stressor event. A person can lose his or her capacity for rational thought. The capacity for rage often begins early in life and continues through adulthood.

A person in rage may also experience tunnel vision, muffled hearing, increased heart rate and hyperventilation. The large amounts of adrenaline and oxygen in the bloodstream may cause a person's extremities to shake.

Psychiatrists say the most extreme form of rage is intermittent explosive disorder, or IED. "It's somebody who really lacks control and is way over the top," said Wallin, who did not speculate on why Rice behaved as he did.

According to the Mayo Clinic, the disorder, which is listed in the DSM-V, involves repeated episodes of "impulsive, aggressive, violent behavior or angry verbal outbursts in which you react grossly out of proportion to the situation."

Recurrent, problematic, impulsive aggression affects 5 to 7 percent of the population, but many Americans do not seek treatment, according to a study published by the American Medical Association.

Research shows that chemical abnormalities are associated with this disorder. People with IED can suddenly explode without provocation.

Examples can include road rage, domestic abuse, throwing or breaking objects, or other temper tantrums. Those affected may attack others, cause bodily injury and property damage. They may also hurt themselves. Later, when they have calmed down, they can feel remorse, regret or shame. Effective treatments can include antidepressants and cognitive behavior therapy.

Wallin admits she is not an expert in IED, but she has witnessed plenty of anger, including physical fights, at sporting events like hockey.

"They are yelling at each other, sitting down and getting rough with each other and all excited with the adrenaline," she said. "The reason they have no control is they are really hyped up. Even the fans love to see the fights."

Experts caution that IED goes outside the bounds of normal anger and is considered an impulse disorder.

Study: Altering brain activity with laser light eliminates addictive behavior in rats

By stimulating one part of the brain with laser light, researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center at UC San Francisco (UCSF) have shown that they can wipe away addictive behavior in rats - or conversely turn non-addicted rats into compulsive cocaine seekers.

"When we turn on a laser light in the prelimbic region of the prefrontal cortex, the compulsive cocaine seeking is gone," said Antonello Bonci, MD, scientific director of the intramural research program at the NIH's National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), where the work was done. Bonci is also an adjunct professor of neurology at UCSF and an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Described this week in the journal Nature, the new study demonstrates the central role the prefrontal cortex plays in compulsive cocaine addiction. It also suggests a new therapy that could be tested immediately in humans, Bonci said.

Any new human therapy would not be based on using lasers, but would most likely rely on electromagnetic stimulation outside the scalp, in particular a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Clinical trials are now being designed to test whether this approach works, Bonci added.

The High Cost of Cocaine Abuse

Cocaine abuse is a major public health problem in the United States today, and it places a heavy toll on society in terms of lost job productivity, lost earnings, cocaine-related crime, incarcerations, investigations, and treatment and prevention programs.

The human toll is even greater, with an estimated 1.4 million Americans addicted to the drug. It is frequently the cause of emergency room visits - 482,188 in 2008 alone - and it is a top cause of heart attacks and strokes for people under 35.

One of the hallmarks of cocaine addiction is compulsive drug taking - the loss of ability to refrain from taking the drug even if it's destroying one's life.

What makes the new work so promising, said Bonci, is that Billy Chen of NIDA, the lead author of the study, and his colleagues were working with an animal model that mimics this sort of compulsive cocaine addiction. The animals, like human addicts, are more likely to make bad decisions and take cocaine even when they are conditioned to expect self-harm associated with it.

Study shows relationship between cocaine-induced brain deficits in prefrontal cortex and cocaine-seeking

Could drug addiction treatment of the future be as simple as an on/off switch in the brain? A study in rats has found that stimulating a key part of the brain reduces compulsive cocaine-seeking and suggests the possibility of changing addictive behavior generally. The study, published in Nature, was conducted by scientists at the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health, and the University of California, San Francisco.

"This exciting study offers a new direction of research for the treatment of cocaine and possibly other addictions," said NIDA Director Dr. Nora D. Volkow. "We already knew, mainly from human brain imaging studies, that deficits in the prefrontal cortex are involved in drug addiction. Now that we have learned how fundamental these deficits are, we feel more confident than ever about the therapeutic promise of targeting that part of the brain."

Compulsive drug-taking, despite negative health and social consequences, has been the most difficult challenge in human drug addiction. NIDA researchers used an animal model of cocaine addiction, in which some rats exhibited addictive behavior by pushing levers to get cocaine even when followed by a mild electric shock to the foot. Other rats did not exhibit addictive responses.

The NIDA scientists compared nerve cell firing patterns in both groups of rats by examining cells from the prefrontal cortex. They determined that cocaine produced greater functional brain deficits in the addicted rats. Scientists then used optogenetic techniques on both groups of rats -- essentially shining a light onto modified cells to increase or lessen activity in that part of the brain. In the addicted rats, activating the brain cells (thereby removing the deficits) reduced cocaine-seeking. In the non-addicted rats, deactivating the brain cells (thereby creating the deficits) increased compulsive cocaine seeking.

Kind Hearted Woman, Raped at 3, Helps Others Heal

When Robin Poor Bear was in her 20s, she asked for a Native American name. The Road Man, or spiritual leader, came up with Kind Hearted Woman.

There was good reason: After a lifetime of physical and sexual abuse, her heart was still bursting with empathy for others.

The daughter of an alcoholic mother, Poor Bear was molested by her foster father at age 3. But today, at 35, she gives a voice to others who have suffered sexual abuse.

"I remember it -- not the rape itself, but the emergency room and the nurses trying to hold me down to examine me," Poor Bear, now living in Minnesota, told ABC News. "I remember the door and being so terrified it would fly open and someone would get me."

Poor Bear suffered repeated sexual abuse at the hands of her foster father and two uncles until she was 13. Then, as a young wife, she was beaten by her husband.

That pain is revisited after the couple divorces and her ex-husband is convicted of molesting their 12-year-old daughter, as well as a teenage foster daughter.

The psychological anguish caused Poor Bear, an Oglala Sioux and member of North Dakota's Spirit Lake tribe in North Dakota, to turn to alcohol. And when Poor Bear eventually spoke up about the abuse, her daughter and son, now 17 and 14, were taken away from her.

On Monday, April 1, and Tuesday, April 2 at 9 ET, PBS's "Frontline" will air a powerful documentary, "Kind Hearted Woman," about Poor Bear's struggle to stay sober, further her education and heal herself from the deep wounds of sexual abuse.

David Sutherland, whose films "The Farmer's Wife" (1998) and "Country Boys" (2005) also offer a cinema verite look at poor, rural life, spent three years with Poor Bear and her children.

The centerpiece of the film is Poor Bear's battle to gain custody of her children while improving her own life.

Kimmer Olesak

Oglala Sioux Robin Poor Bear struggles to... View Full Size

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Sutherland, 67, followed the family from Poor Bear's first day out of alcohol rehab, through school and jobs, juggling being a mother and trying to become a social worker. Frustrated at every turn, Poor Bear fights a corrupt tribal legal system and a culture of domestic violence that pervades many Native American communities.

Native American women have the second-highest rate of rape of all races and ethnicities, at 27 percent, second only to mixed-race women, according to the Centers for Disease Control's 2011 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey. Nearly half of all of these women have experienced rape, physical violence and/or stalking in their lifetime.

"There are two or three thousand enrolled members living on the reservation and just a small handful of law enforcement to get calls," Poor Bear said about the time she spent a Spirit Lake Reservation. "Some reports are not taken seriously and some are not followed through the proper protocols."

Last year, unrelated to the documentary, the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs took over social services at Spirit Lake because of concerns that tribal mismanagement had contributed to abuse of children.

But Poor Bear said that the causes of domestic violence and abuse go deeper than scarce funding and little oversight on Native American reservations. She blames the "rape" of the indigenous culture when it was "Christianized."

"Who taught us how to be parents and how to be loving and caring and kind to each other when they took away all the traditions and we couldn't speak our language without being beaten?" Poor Bear asked.

A former singer, Poor Bear said that she comes from a legacy of heartbreak, but also of generosity.

Her mother, an alcoholic, froze to death in her 30s banging on the door of Poor Bear's foster family, who refused to let her in, Poor Bear tells an audience of abused women in the film.

Her grandfather died saving children in a log cabin fire, she tells ABCNews.com. "The doorway collapsed and when they found him, he was still protecting and holding a baby," she said.

Sutherland did not intend to make a film about Native Americans and was hesitant to reinforce negative stereotypes about life on the reservation. He had singled out several other battered women in his search for an authentic character-driven story about abuse, but Poor Bear's rose to the top.

"She had an associate's degree and was smart," he said. "I liked her sense of humor and she was always upbeat, even in the saddest moments, with the kids."

Sutherland never expected the turn the dramatic narrative would take. When Poor Bear's daughter Darian reveals she was molested by her father at the age of 12, she is required to testify in federal court.

'Stalking the Bogeyman': Plot to Kill Child Rapist Comes Alive

David Holthouse said he had the murder meticulously planned. He bought a Beretta 9 mm with a silencer and had the serial number removed, then tested it in the Arizona desert. He said he stalked the intended victim's Colorado home and came within a hair's breadth of killing the man who brutally raped him as a 7-year-old.

"This wasn't just a revenge fantasy, though it's tempting to lie about it now," said Holthouse, now 41 and working as a documentary filmmaker and investigative reporter in Alaska. "If I had gone through with it, I most certainly would have been caught."

Instead, Holthouse said, he confronted his childhood assailant face-to face and found not the "bogeyman" who had haunted his psyche for 25 years but a "frightened, damaged man" begging for his forgiveness.

And were it not for a serendipitous discovery of that awful truth by his mother, Holthouse swears he, too, would have been a dead man.

Holthouse first went public with a story in 2004 in the weekly Denver Westword. Later, in 2011, he told about his ordeal on National Public Radio's "This American Life."

Now, the story of his sexual assault and the shame and venomous anger that followed has been adapted for the stage in "Stalking the Bogeyman," which is in production for a February 2014 opening Off Broadway.

"I just happened to be listening to a 'This American Life' podcast and I stopped in my tracks, kind of paralyzed," said writer and director Markus Potter ("A Perfect Future"), artistic director of NewYorkRep. "Immediately, I thought this story needs to be told. It needs to reach a wider audience."

Courtesy David Holthouse

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Holthouse's story is a powerful one, as he describes in detail about "coming to grips with the killer inside of me."

He was in the second grade in Alaska when the attack occurred. The alleged rapist was 10 years older and a star high school football player, the son of his parents' close friends.

One night in 1978, Holthouse said, when the grownups were "drinking wine and playing board games," the 17-year-old whisked young David away to his room under the guise of teaching him some karate moves and closed the door.

"I didn't know what was going on, but I knew it was bad, so I started crying, and he told me to shut up and then started chasing me around the room, waving the sword," he wrote. "He put the blade to my throat and backed me into a corner, where I dropped into a crouch and cowered. Then, he told me to take off my pants.

"It wasn't Michael Jackson gently introducing my hand to his magical giraffe, and it wasn't anything like a Catholic priest masturbating an altar boy. I was seven, and it was violent, sick, pedophiliac rape. ... I no longer believed in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy, but from that night on, I had no such doubts about the Bogeyman."

Out of fear and shame, Holthouse never spoke about it, though he claimed there were other attempts to abuse him.

"Part of it was I didn't really have a firm concept of what had happened," he told ABCNews.com. "Nobody ever talked to me about sex or rape. I don't think it was a function of the era. Most 7-year-olds don't know what rape is. I didn't have the words to apply to it. ... It was easier to keep quiet."

He wrote that he didn't want to upset his parents: "I didn't want their memories of my childhood tarnished with this scum."

Nearly half of all victims of sexual assault are under the age of 18, according to statistics from the Department of Justice. Of those, 10 percent are boys. Other studies have shown rates as high as one in six boys. An alarming 93 percent of them have been abused by someone they know -- a friend or family member.

"There is no standard reaction or response to sexual abuse," said Jennifer Marsh, vice president of victim services at the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. "It can range from anger to denial to a sense of hopelessness. Some of the time we see that anger projected inward.

"We hear folks every day who are angry and talk about hurting their perpetrators," she said. "Usually, it's more a figure of speech than a plan."

As a teen, Holthouse researched rape, learned about the "vicious cycle" of abuse and feared that he, too, might turn into pedophile.

"I felt like a werewolf had bitten me and it was only a matter of time before the full moon rose," he wrote.

He said that if those desires surfaced, he would kill himself and make it look like a mountaineering accident.

After college, Holthouse moved to Colorado, but the memory of the rape "festered." When his mother mentioned that the alleged rapist was also living in Denver with his wife and children, he imagined the man was continuing to assault children, perhaps even his own.

March is heating up...

ESPN Recipes for all your favorite sports! Also: New Foursquare, SoundCloud, and Weather Triggers, plus more. ...so is the NCAA Basketball Tournament! Follow the Madness with this Recipe: Text me Men’s NCAA Basketball breaking news by riway on March 14, 2013 ESPN is now on IFTTT! Track breaking news, in-game updates, and final scores for all your favorite sports and teams. With such a wide variety of ESPN Recipes, there’s something for every sports fan. What’s more, we added new Foursquare, SoundCloud, and Weather Triggers for you to try. Here are a few Recipes we rallied together to show off the new features:   Send me tomorrow’s weather report today at 9 PM by bmaryott on March 24, 2013 Save new Anoraak tracks from SoundCloud search to Pocket by alexander on March 27, 2013 Email your mother Foursquare check-ins tagged #mom! Useful for brownie points by acco on March 06, 2013 Every day at 6 AM, add today’s weather report to my calendar by kev on March 27, 2013 Show your support for the Texas Rangers on Twitter every time a game starts by rastyyle on March 19, 2013 Discover new Recipes and keep sharing your feedback. If there’s a Channel you’d like to see on IFTTT, don’t hesitate to share your suggestions with us. We’ve got exciting things in store for the summer, so stay tuned.   —The IFTTT Team P.S. We’re hiring!     This newsletter was automatically sent to yangquebec.abuse@blogger.com because you signed up for IFTTT with that address. To disable this communication, you can manage your email settings or unsubscribe from the IFTTT Newsletter.   IFTTT · 923 Market Street #400 · San Francisco, CA 94103

'Stalking the Bogeyman': Plot to Kill Child Rapist Comes Alive

David Holthouse said he had the murder meticulously planned. He bought a Beretta 9 mm with a silencer and had the serial number removed, then tested it in the Arizona desert. He said he stalked the intended victim's Colorado home and came within a hair's breadth of killing the man who brutally raped him as a 7-year-old.

"This wasn't just a revenge fantasy, though it's tempting to lie about it now," said Holthouse, now 41 and working as a documentary filmmaker and investigative reporter in Alaska. "If I had gone through with it, I most certainly would have been caught."

Instead, Holthouse said, he confronted his childhood assailant face-to face and found not the "bogeyman" who had haunted his psyche for 25 years but a "frightened, damaged man" begging for his forgiveness.

And were it not for a serendipitous discovery of that awful truth by his mother, Holthouse swears he, too, would have been a dead man.

Holthouse first went public with a story in 2004 in the weekly Denver Westword. Later, in 2011, he told about his ordeal on National Public Radio's "This American Life."

Now, the story of his sexual assault and the shame and venomous anger that followed has been adapted for the stage in "Stalking the Bogeyman," which is in production for a February 2014 opening Off Broadway.

"I just happened to be listening to a 'This American Life' podcast and I stopped in my tracks, kind of paralyzed," said writer and director Markus Potter ("A Perfect Future"), artistic director of NewYorkRep. "Immediately, I thought this story needs to be told. It needs to reach a wider audience."

Courtesy David Holthouse

As an adult, David Holthouse, shown here at... View Full Size

Revenge, Delayed Watch Video

Jerry Sandusky Sentenced to Jail; Victims Speak Out Watch Video

Pedophile Priests Paid to Leave Church Watch Video

Holthouse's story is a powerful one, as he describes in detail about "coming to grips with the killer inside of me."

He was in the second grade in Alaska when the attack occurred. The rapist was 10 years older and a star high school football player, the son of his parents' close friends.

One night in 1978, Holthouse said, when the grownups were "drinking wine and playing board games," the 17-year-old whisked young David away to his room under the guise of teaching him some karate moves and closed the door.

"I didn't know what was going on, but I knew it was bad, so I started crying, and he told me to shut up and then started chasing me around the room, waving the sword," he wrote. "He put the blade to my throat and backed me into a corner, where I dropped into a crouch and cowered. Then, he told me to take off my pants.

"It wasn't Michael Jackson gently introducing my hand to his magical giraffe, and it wasn't anything like a Catholic priest masturbating an altar boy. I was seven, and it was violent, sick, pedophiliac rape. ... I no longer believed in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy, but from that night on, I had no such doubts about the Bogeyman."

Out of fear and shame, Holthouse never spoke about it, though he claimed there were other attempts to abuse him.

"Part of it was I didn't really have a firm concept of what had happened," he told ABCNews.com. "Nobody ever talked to me about sex or rape. I don't think it was a function of the era. Most 7-year-olds don't know what rape is. I didn't have the words to apply to it. ... It was easier to keep quiet."

He wrote that he didn't want to upset his parents: "I didn't want their memories of my childhood tarnished with this scum."

Nearly half of all victims of sexual assault are under the age of 18, according to statistics from the Department of Justice. Of those, 10 percent are boys. Other studies have shown rates as high as one in six boys. An alarming 93 percent of them have been abused by someone they know -- a friend or family member.

"There is no standard reaction or response to sexual abuse," said Jennifer Marsh, vice president of victim services at the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. "It can range from anger to denial to a sense of hopelessness. Some of the time we see that anger projected inward.

"We hear folks every day who are angry and talk about hurting their perpetrators," she said. "Usually, it's more a figure of speech than a plan."

As a teen, Holthouse researched rape, learned about the "vicious cycle" of abuse and feared that he, too, might turn into pedophile.

"I felt like a werewolf had bitten me and it was only a matter of time before the full moon rose," he wrote.

He said that if those desires surfaced, he would kill himself and make it look like a mountaineering accident.

After college, Holthouse moved to Colorado, but the memory of the rape "festered." When his mother mentioned that the rapist was also living in Denver with his wife and children, he imagined the man was continuing to assault children, perhaps even his own.