Mike Tyson is a heavyweight world boxing champion. This paper delves at the Mike Tyson biographical history, with the aim of understanding the motives behind his aggressive attacks to people especially the chunking out of Evander Holyfield's ear in a boxing match. Through his biographical history, the paper will include a DSM-V diagnosis of the client and how the Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy can help in his treatment.
The Life of Mike Tyson
Tyson was born on 30th June 1966 in Brooklyn, New York. During this period, the United States was characterized by severe black discontent which led to widespread poverty and unemployment among the African –American community. Tyson’s family was affected by this discrimination pushing them to live in low-income neighborhoods that were associated with dangerous activities. Tyson's mother, Lorna Tyson worked single-handedly as nurse aid to provide and support her children after going through a divorce. However, her salary was not enough to pay the bills. Thus, she decides to get into a relationship with Eddie Gillison with the aim of easing the financial burden. The relationship did not materialize as the Gilison would continuously abuse her and Tyson and her brothers had to protect their mother. His family would consistently go on the move to look for cheaper options, but each move always led to the degradation of their conditions. In his autobiography, Tyson described the houses they lived of having overpowering smell comprising of sewage and dirt. Her mother did not make their living better as she always engaged in prostitution and substance abuse addiction. In many instances, he recounts how his mother would give him drugs to make him fall asleep. Besides, his mother was not concerned about his welfare, behavior, and achievement as she was always at home with prostitutes and pimps intoxicating themselves with drugs.
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In his early childhood and adolescence, Tyson developed pimples but also had a high pitched voice different from others. This led to him being bullied and victimized by older boys who considered him as a fairy boy. To deal with this kind of humiliation, Tyson retreated in taking care of pigeons to give him comfort. The pigeons provided him with love and affection that he did not get during his childhood. One day, the childhood gang decided to humiliate him again by killing the birds, but this time he chose to defend himself by fighting back. He was pleased that when he realized that he had won and decided to continue fighting whenever he was humiliated. By the time turned 11 years, Tyson started engaging in petty crimes such as mugging, smoking and selling drugs. This led to him being taken to juvenile detention centers to see if his behavior would improve. In the road of reforming, he encountered Bobby Stewart, a professional boxing coach who promised him lessons as long as he developed his behavior and grades.
Bobby Stewart referred him to D’Amato a legendary trainer who realized that Tyson could be a heavyweight boxing champion in the world. D'Amato decided to permanently host Tyson to acquire vast knowledge of the boxing sport. This kind of relationship was reassuring to Tyson as he was able to get affection and love. In the boxing ring, he used the fear of failure to work hard and win. However, his behavior outside was the same as he was disrespectful to his trainers.
Psychological Disorder
Going by Tyson biography, he is likely to be suffering from manic depression or bipolar disorder. According to DSM-V, manic depression is a brain disorder that often causes sudden shifts in a person’s moods, energy and ability to function (Whitton, Treadway, & Pizzagalli, 2015). The symptoms are so intense that they sometimes lead to aggression resulting in damage in relationships and making it hard for an individual to keep a job. Everyone can develop manic depression, but studies have shown that individuals at high risk include those who have dreams of being perfectionists, lacked love during childhood, imprisonment and also grew up in troubled neighborhoods. Apart from environmental and social factors, psychologist believes that damage to the brain neurotransmitters can cause manic depression. This is because neurotransmitters control impulses functions of the brain.
One of the symptoms of manic depression is irritable mood characterized by feelings lasting sadness and nervousness (Whitton, Treadway, & Pizzagalli, 2015). After the divorce of his parents, Tyson was very devastated and retreated to becoming loneliness. At that time, he was characterized as being a lonely, angry and reserved boy. This was made worse when her mother decided to get married to an extremely abusive man, Eddie Gillison. Together with his brothers, they had to engage in some aggression to defend their mother from abuse. In his early boxing matches, Tyson admits feelings of anxiousness in the locker room to the extent of contemplating to boarding a train before the game. He was afraid of losing the game fearing that his reputation could be damaged.
Individuals with maniac depression also suffer from shame, self-esteem issues, and inferiority complex. Growing up in Brooklyn, Tyson admits that he was never confident as a child. This was because he was overweight, and spoke with a high pitch voice making other children to harass him constantly. Besides, he felt that his brothers were superior to him and generally liked by others as compared to him (Morgan, 2018). He was particularly not happy with his mother because of continually neglecting them regarding providing a safe and secure environment. Most of the time, the mother would beat him and administer drugs for him to fall asleep. Both the parents were also disinterested in his behaviors and achievements and failed to offer him, love. His physical characteristics, lack of confidence coupled with lack of parental attention/involvement made him develop aggression behavior to protect himself.
According to individuals with maniac, depression is likely to engage in aggressive behaviors necessitated by feeling that people are disrespecting or humiliating him. ( Whitton, Treadway, & Pizzagalli, 2015). In many instances, he admits to experiencing intense anger toward the opponent to the extent of wanting to rip their heart apart (Morgan, 2018). In another example, he attacked Mr. King and beat him viciously after realizing that he was cheating him out some of his money. The recent incidence was of him biting a considerable chunk of opponent Evander Holyfield ear after he noticed that he was attacking him outside the standard rules of the sport. Some of these incidences made Tyson become disqualified in the boxing competition as well as serving sentences in prison.
Mental status and behavioral observation
At the beginning of the counseling session, Tyson arrived well groomed. He was very attentive, answering all questions positively. He was not suffering from any hallucinations and did not take any drugs. His thinking was appeared to be at least of average and no learning difficulties witnessed.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
CBT is a form of therapy that aims at helping an individual manage their problems by changing how they think and behave (Butler et al., 2006). Dysfunctional beliefs are considering habits that individuals learn from others. They are often biased, not objective and are not based on reality. Tyson has grown with self-esteem issues based on his physique and confidence. This negative thoughts pattern and the associated behaviors like aggression have made him angry and had maniac symptoms. By using CBT, Tyson was able to identify his main problems including anger and stress. The primary goal was to work on his flawed thinking patterns and making him focus on his success as a boxing champion.
Behavioral therapies that were applied include psycho-education. This session was to make Tyson learn the relationship between moods and other related behaviors. Training was done on how he can identify and monitor symptoms relating to aggressive actions. Anxiety control techniques play such as relaxation, and cognitive distraction played an essential role in preventing aggression. Stress management techniques were also applied to help Tyson in problem-solving and excellent interpersonal skills. The client has had issues relating to maintaining interpersonal relationships. It was essential to keep the appropriate therapeutic relationship that had strict boundaries to avoid any altercation with the client. At the beginning seemed to be agitated by the questions hence the reason for maintaining certain limits to prevent violence.
In conclusion, Tyson manic /bipolar disorders developed early in his childhood because of being brought up in a violent environment and lack of his mother to take control of his behaviors. The Cognitive behavioral therapy was used to ensure that Tyson was able to recover from the disorder successfully.
References
Butler, A. C., Chapman, J. E., Forman, E. M., & Beck, A. T. (2006). The empirical status of cognitive-behavioral therapy: a review of meta-analyses. Clinical psychology review , 26 (1), 17-31.
Morgan, J. (2018). Out of the ring: boxing and long-term brain damage. The Lancet Neurology .
Whitton, A. E., Treadway, M. T., & Pizzagalli, D. A. (2015). Reward processing dysfunction in major depression, bipolar disorder, , and schizophrenia. Current opinion in psychiatry , 28 (1), 7.
