Uncontrollable rage?

There is a point that I want to make about those "former friends", but I think maybe to get to it I need to mention another memory first.

I was at Beaverton Transit Center waiting for the train. Over on the bus side, this man just started yelling at this woman.

She was ignoring him. It was not certain that he was yelling at her; he was not acting lucid so I can't rule out hallucination. He stayed pretty focused in her direction, though, so it seemed to be her.

There were lots of people around, and it was not long before she got on a bus. Even if he had followed her, there was a bus driver there, so in that context it did not seem dangerous, just unpleasant.

None of those details are really uncommon, but it stayed with me for two reasons. 

One was the intensity of the rage where it seemed to have a visible target. Often that kind of meltdown is directed at someone invisible. Also, while the visible person is very upset, there is often more fear or despair or something like that.

The other reason it stood out was that I had some suspicions about the origin. 

The man did not appear to be homeless, but most of the people I had seen exhibiting similar behavior were homeless. 

I had learned by then was that while it is certainly possible for someone mentally ill to become homeless, it is more common that homelessness -- with the stress and lack of security and dehumanization -- brings on mental illness.

I acknowledge that this was supposition, but it was a strong feeling. I felt that this was someone whose prolonged anger had taken away his balance and brought on delusion.

If you look for associations between anger and mental illness, initially you find those in the other order, like bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder might lead to rage outbursts. Well, maybe, but there are people who have those disorders and will not rage at you. 

We also look at children having tantrums and accept that a normal part of growing up is emotional regulation, where you get better at dealing with emotions in appropriate ways. 

(Or maybe some children learn mainly to repress their emotions; our society is not perfect.)

I suspect that you can also lose the ability to self-regulate, especially if you don't see the value in it. Now being loudly horrible is demonstrated by people at the highest levels of government. Previously, people in those positions would often be kind of corrupt and horrible, but they would maintain this veneer at least. 

Would it surprise anyone if I added that in that incident, it was a middle-aged (or so) white man yelling at a younger brown woman?