Video game addiction : A psychiatric disorder ?

[Libertine]

I guess the next thing is to say anyone addicted to the internet has a psychiatric disorder aswell.

One of the more interesting quotes -

A leading council of the nation's largest doctors' group wants to have this behavior officially classified as a psychiatric disorder, to raise awareness and enable sufferers to get insurance coverage for treatment.

Pocono Record - Doctors group: Declare excessive video-game playing a medical disorder

Doctors group: Declare excessive video-game playing a medical disorder

June 22, 2007
CHICAGO (AP) — The telltale signs are ominous: teens holing up in their rooms, ignoring friends, family, even food and a shower, while grades plummet and belligerence soars.

The culprit isn't alcohol or drugs. It's video games, which for certain kids can be as powerfully addictive as heroin, some doctors contend.

A leading council of the nation's largest doctors' group wants to have this behavior officially classified as a psychiatric disorder, to raise awareness and enable sufferers to get insurance coverage for treatment.

In a report prepared for the American Medical Association's annual policy meeting starting Saturday in Chicago, the council asks the group to lobby for the disorder to be included in a widely used mental illness manual created and published by the American Psychiatric Association.

AMA delegates could vote on the proposal as early as Monday.

It likely won't happen without heated debate. Video game makers scoff at the notion that their products can cause a psychiatric disorder.

Even some mental health experts say labeling the habit a formal addiction is going too far.

Dr. James Scully, the psychiatric association's medical director, said the group will seriously consider the AMA report in the long process of revising the diagnostic manual.

The current manual was published in 1994; the next edition is to be completed in 2012.

Up to 90 percent of American youngsters play video games and as many as 15 percent of them — more than 5 million kids — may be addicted, according to data cited in the AMA council's report.

Joyce Protopapas of Frisco, Texas, said her 17-year-old son, Michael, was a video addict.

Over nearly two years, video and Internet games transformed him from an outgoing, academically gifted teen into a reclusive manipulator who flunked two 10th grade classes and spent several hours day and night playing a popular online video game called World of Warcraft.

"My father was an alcoholic ... and I saw exactly the same thing" in Michael, Protopapas said. "We battled him until October of last year," she said. "We went to therapists, we tried taking the game away.

"He would threaten us physically. He would curse and call us every name imaginable," she said. "It was as if he was possessed."

When she suggested to therapists that Michael had a video game addiction, "nobody was familiar with it," she said. "They all pooh-poohed it."

Last fall, the family found a therapist who "told us he was addicted, period." They sent Michael to a therapeutic boarding school, where he has spent the past six months — at a cost of $5,000 monthly that insurance won't cover, his mother said.

A support group called On-Line Gamers Anonymous has numerous postings on its Web site from gamers seeking help. Liz Woolley, of Harrisburg, Pa., created the site after her 21-year-old son fatally shot himself in 2001 while playing an online game she said destroyed his life.

In a February posting, a 13-year-old identified only as Ian told of playing video games for nearly 12 hours straight, said he felt suicidal and wondered if he was addicted.

"I think i need help," the boy said.

Postings also come from adults, mostly men, who say video game addiction cost them jobs, family lives and self-esteem.

According to the report prepared by the AMA's Council on Science and Public Health, based on a review of scientific literature, "dependence-like behaviors are more likely in children who start playing video games at younger ages."

Overuse most often occurs with online role-playing games involving multiple players, the report says. Blizzard Entertainment's teen-rated, monster-killing World of Warcraft is among the most popular. A company spokesman declined to comment on whether the games can cause addiction.

Dr. Martin Wasserman, a pediatrician who heads the Maryland State Medical Society, said the AMA proposal will help raise awareness and called it "the right thing to do."

But Michael Gallagher, president of the Entertainment Software Association, said the trade group sides with psychiatrists "who agree that this so-called 'video-game addiction' is not a mental disorder."

Dr. Karen Pierce, a psychiatrist at Chicago's Children's Memorial Hospital, said she sees at least two children a week who play video games excessively. "I saw somebody this week who hasn't been to bed, hasn't showered ... because of video games," she said. "He is really a mess."

She said she treats it like any addiction and creating a separate diagnosis is unnecessary.

Dr. Michael Brody, head of a TV and media committee at the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, agreed. He praised the AMA council for bringing attention to the problem, but said excessive video-game playing could be a symptom for other things, such as depression or social anxieties.

Another article from the Washington Post -

washingtonpost.com - nation, world, technology and Washington area news and headlines

[RickTheRipper]

I do think people can get addicted to games, but saying it's a mental illness is a little odd. Why can't they just classify all addictions in one category: addicition. Not drug addiction, alcohol addiction, game addiction, etc.

Because in the end, aren't they the same thing? The person gets hooked, and won't stop doing it for anyone/anything until they get put into rehab (sometimes people can do it themselves though).

Bah, I don't really know what I'm talking about. Yay!

[Pvt.Dirt]

I don't view it as an illness at all. I could use the same example with something like fishing. If a guy lives close to a lake and has a week off and loves to fish, he's going to be out there all the time. If a guy has a week off and loves video game then he's going to play video games all week.

[Magnum Force]

I don't view addictions as being all that bad (but it depends on the content that the addiction encircles). Addictions to unharmful things such as video games are really just mental/physical outlets for those people who have the addiction. We all live in our own little worlds at times and usually we live in them when we are performing our addictions.

Addiction doesn't become dangerous until it becomes an obsession.

Hobby leads to addiction which leads to obsession.

[Negative Creep]

Originally Posted by RickTheRipper

I do think people can get addicted to games, but saying it's a mental illness is a little odd. Why can't they just classify all addictions in one category: addicition. Not drug addiction, alcohol addiction, game addiction, etc.

I agree with this statement 100%... I thought it was kind of odd to see an old episode of "Intervention" a while back where this one kid was hopelessly addicted to FPS games like Halo. Turns out that he went into a rehab program, but still plays games... just not as much as before the treatment.

The counselors in that episode kept saying words to the effect of, "An addiction is an addiction... nothing more, nothing less."

During the episode, my wife even said to me, "Hell, at least you're not as bad as that kid is."

I replied, "Gee... I love you too."

[Allstar]

Eh, I was addicted to socom 2. I think the headset and communicating really gets people hooked besides gameplay.

But I didn't not take showers or eat, I spent time with plenty of friends and family, and had a great .... life outside of it.(Well in the later of the socom series)

Idk, Some kids have it worse, there's a kid down the street who doesn't come outside is short, fat, long hair, and stinks to high heaven, and he's hooked on WoW, and GOW.

[c0mmand3r]

Video game addiction is real, but it is not a mental disorder. I have to believe that video games themselves are not addicting, but the teamplay within a game. I don't know about anyone else, but if I'm playing socom with no people in that room it gets old fast. It is a social outlet to hide distress or anxiety from life. It brings older kids back to a better and simplier time of their lives, same for adults. If parents talk with their children at a young age about not playing video games when it is sunny and beautiful outside, yet only playing them when there is nothing to do and every obligation has been met before hand we wouldn't have this problem.

I was addicted to a video game before. Final Fantasy XI for PS2 over the summer of 2004. It wasn't nearly as bad as some of the things posted in the article, but I was addicted. I never missed a family event or a shower, but I would sit inside playing the game instead of throwing a baseball or doing something of that sort. I severed those ties easily though when I went back to school. It isn't hard to shake an addiction to video games, it is all mental. If you don't want to play you don't play.

[dansdarkside]

Originally Posted by c0mmand3r

Video game addiction is real, but it is not a mental disorder. I have to believe that video games themselves are not addicting, but the teamplay within a game. I don't know about anyone else, but if I'm playing socom with no people in that room it gets old fast. It is a social outlet to hide distress or anxiety from life. It brings older kids back to a better and simplier time of their lives, same for adults. If parents talk with their children at a young age about not playing video games when it is sunny and beautiful outside, yet only playing them when there is nothing to do and every obligation has been met before hand we wouldn't have this problem.

I don't know about that, When Pokemon red came out for the Gameboy, Could not anything get me off of it for 5 minutes. I even got my pops to buy me an AC adapter so I would not waste my $2 allowance on battery's. By the time I stopped playing it I had all 152 Pokemon and I still know all of them and when the evolve and everything. And I was young when that came out. I think I was like 10, and life could not get any simpiler, all i did was eat, ****, and play pokemon.

[NUN-PUNCHER]

Hello ! My Name is NUN-PUNCHER and I've been addicted to Video Game for 25 Years. My addiction is at its all time peak since their is nothing positive on TV anymore except for War...Negativity....Pedophilia....Religous Extremism and people making complete jackasses of themselves on reality TV at the expense of their Dignity. I ignore my real friends because their all alcoholics and drug addicts in one way or another and instead choose to play with my Cyberfriends that are great distances away and can't influence me with their unhealthy & unsavory addictions.
All this talk about addiciton makes me feel lazy and worthless, I think I'll get in the car and go the Gym and work out................tomorrow.

[RickTheRipper]

Now everyone be nice and say hello to NUN-PUNCHER.

Hi NUN-PUNCHER!