Mindfulness is really good for situations like anger. I don't know where GP is getting his or her information regarding 'the West' from, but the aversion to anger is certainly not a solely Western trait.

  As a log from a pyre, burnt at both ends and fouled in the middle, serves neither for firewood in the village nor for timber in the forest, so is such a wrathful man.

— Anguttara Nikaya II, 95

  He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me of my property. Whosoever harbor such thoughts will never be able to still their enmity.

  Never indeed is hatred stilled by hatred; it will only be stilled by non-hatred — this is an eternal law.

— Dhp., vv. 4-5