Driving a stifling taxi cab on clogged city streets for hour after hour – scared half to death by careless pedestrians stepping into the road, harangued by passengers late for their lunch appointments, exasperated by the incompetence of your fellow drivers – would tax the patience of Mahatma Gandhi.

These men and women deserve our sympathy. They need our help to get through their shift without winding down the window and shouting obscenities at the next person who annoys them. Or worse. Quite apart from the danger to other road users, there is also ample evidence that anger can lead to a heart attack and raises the risk of heart disease.

Anger management

Psychologists have investigated the causes and consequences of aggressive, angry driving, but much less attention has been paid to strategies for preventing it. There have been a few attempts to measure how good cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) are at changing the attitudes and responses of angry drivers to certain cues, but now researchers in Iran have conducted the first study to compare the effectiveness of these two approaches. Continue reading “Mindfulness monthly: irate taxi drivers, craving and paranoia” →