London, according to a new survey, is the angriest city in Britain, and Lambeth is the angriest borough in London. What's it like to reside inside this hotbed of throbbing, Brownite disgruntlement? I've lived in Lambeth for almost a quarter of a century, and let me tell you, it's extremely infuriating.

The anger of others is regularly apparent. Last week, I saw a man wheeling a suitcase across a road, reaching out with his hand to stay a car that was backing right into him, illegally. The miscreant driver slammed on his brakes, leapt out of the car that he had just almost killed an innocent pedestrian with, and screamed – angrily: "Don't you touch my fucking car, or I'll fucking kill you! I'll fucking kill you."

Last month, as I stepped on to the top deck of a bus with my eight-year-old son, a blinding white fury of noise and glass forcefully announced that someone had just thrown a large pebble through the window beside us. Retreating, shocked, I told the driver what had happened. "Is there any damage?" he asked, confused, before evacuating his vehicle. "Why, oh, why," I thought – angrily, "didn't I keep my gob shut until we'd got to Clapham?"

Last year, a friend round the corner was beaten within an inch of his life, on his way home from the pub, even though he'd already pressed all his valuables on to his assailant. The year before, Freddy, who lived a few doors down from us, was stabbed to death by a gang, right outside our house. He was only 18. Those things don't make local residents angry. They make us shocked and sad. There's so much human damage here, so much waste. It's been like this for all the time I've known it.

Surveys are sometimes silly. But this one is not. Commissioned by the British Association of Anger Management, which sounds like something from a Chris Morris satire, it does make the right connection. Its director, Mike Fisher, says: "I believe that issues such as crime, violence, domestic violence, road rage, addiction, eating disorders, depression and many other mental health issues all stem from our inability as a culture to handle or express our feelings, especially those of anger."

Lambeth isn't only the angriest place in British, it also boasts one of the highest incidences of mental disorder. GP records for 2009 suggest that about 1.4% of the adult population suffers from a severe mental illness. That's nearly three times higher than the average expected from national surveys. Go figure.