Should embitterment be included among mental disorders?

Abstract

Psychiatrists increasingly ofen report seeing people who come to them with a variety of complaints that include a decrease of their working capacity, a general dissatisfaction with their position in life, a lack of energy and irritability. These patients are bitter about the way in which others have been treating them, angry with their peers, desperate about their future. They come to psychiatrists directly or because they have been referred by general practitioners who have tried to help them with a variety of treatments without much success. Linden (Linden 2003; Linden 2008) proposed that the symptoms seen in such people be viewed as a syndrome that requires specific treatment and offered the term "embitterment" as a name for the condition. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Vienna.