"Video Game Addiction" to become a real illness?

[Merusk]

Is video-game addiction a mental disorder?
Group pushes to classify behavior as an ailment for awareness, insurance
By Lindsey Tanner

Updated: 2:57 p.m. ET June 21, 2007
CHICAGO - 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 says 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.

A woman in the New Haven, Conn., area who bought the game for her 15-year-old son last year, says he got hooked on it.

“Now that I look back on it, it’s like I went out and bought him his first Jack Daniel’s,” said the 49-year-old woman who didn’t want her name used to spare her son from ridicule.

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.”

“The American Medical Association is making premature conclusions without the benefit of complete and thorough data,” Gallagher said.

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 that already have their own diagnoses.

“You could make lots of behavioral things into addictions. Why stop at video gaming?” Brody asked. Why not Blackberries, cell phones, or other irritating habits, he said.

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

I debated on where to stick this, and finally decided in here. Seems the best place for now.  Once again Liz Woolley pops up, pimping her dead son out of her own self-pity for ignoring him in the first place.   I wonder about the post by the "13 year old" on their site.  Knowing the web means knowing that place has to get trolled at least every few weeks, and it'd be easy for a 'normal' person to be taken-in by a bored gaming troll.

Still, I agree with the last two doctors. No need for a special diagnosis, it's easily covered under other "addictive" behavior.  Is there an APA diagnosis for TV watching? 20-40 hors a week of sitting on your ass doing no thinking seems problematic to me.  But then you'd be painting a WIDE swath of America with that brush, instead of the latest pariahs and social troublemakers.

[Paelos]

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 that already have their own diagnoses.

That's where I fall in the argument. Are there people addicted to games? Sure, I've seen a few, and we've probably played with a few in MMO's and called them catasses. However, unhealthy playing of video games almost always stems from something else going on in your life, especially in the teens. Most likely it's that your parents didn't bother to kick you in the ass when you wanted to sit in front of a game for 8 hours a day.

EXAMPLE: Get ready for hilarity as these parents tell their kid he's grounding from WoW

I laughed my ass off.

[Chimpy]

From my somewhat informed layman's perspective, it seems to me that if the psychiatricological community would just admit flat out, in plain words, that almost all forms of psychological dependence/addiction are a symptom of something deeper and more all encompassing life would be better.

I have had my stints with "addiction" to various things, and it all comes down to escaping wanting my other demons, plain and simple.

[Tebonas]

I know I shouldn't laugh but this example was hilarious. He maybe even had to change guilds afterward. It kills your reputation when you are a whining crybaby :)

[Sairon]

Games are addictive, I don't think there's any question about that. I know quite a few, myself included, who easily get addicted to certain kind of games. I was what you'd probably call addicted to AO back in the days for some time. I pretty much sat the entire summer the entire days with very few exceptions. And I had a great life with little to no IRL problems. That's why I'll probably never do drugs, bad enough being hooked on alcohol and games 

[Tebonas]

Games are one of the things addictive personalities can latch unto. So are drugs (including cigarettes and alcohol), food, sport, sex, or work.

You have to watch out for numerous things if you are an addictive personality. Its just part of your life. Crusades against specific things you can become addicted to are just ridiculous. Of course, I would be willing to see that different in the case of work 

[Engels]

A wierd phenomenon that I've been privy to is people fabricating drama within their game communities to give their on-line addiction the 'feel' of real life. If there's interpersonal drama going on, it must mean that its somehow 'real' and therefore justifies them having absolutely no other social outlet other than their online game. At some level, its somehow worse than people who watch Friends or MTV Real World or the like.

[Tebonas]

Oh, thats what they are doing? I always wondered, but that actually makes sense. I guess thats why my "Its only a game, calm down you drama queens" really got me on the most hated list with both sides every time.

[Paelos]

At some level, its somehow worse than people who watch Friends or MTV Real World or the like.

Uh, Friends is a scripted Sitcom, not really drama-infused-bitching reality TV.

[Nebu]

Sounds like the same idiot MDs that are trying to get "metabolic disorder" classified as a disease.  As someone stated above, extensive video game playing is a symptom of a different disorder (often depression).  Classifying this as a singular disorder is a sort of stygmatization.  This is shoddy medicine.

[WayAbvPar]

There are physical manifestations of this disorder- I am suffering from a few of them currently. Since the arrival of my Elite, my right (fret) hand cramps easily, while whole left arm aches from playing Fight Night 3 for countless hours. I also have a nasty blister on my left thumb from same.

Addiction + decrepit body = owwies.

[Engels]

At some level, its somehow worse than people who watch Friends or MTV Real World or the like.

Uh, Friends is a scripted Sitcom, not really drama-infused-bitching reality TV.

You can call it whatever you like, but from here, it looked like viewers watching people having a 'cool' social life as a pallative for a deficit in their own lives. There always seemed to be an undercurrent of 'you WISH you had the problems these guys have' throughout the show.

[voodoolily]

If Internet Addiction were a medical condition people could sue over getting fired for spending too much time goofing off (like me). Slippery slope indeed.

[Chimpy]

If Internet Addiction were a medical condition people could sue over getting fired for spending too much time goofing off (like me). Slippery slope indeed.

Didn't some guy sue IBM recently for being fired because of his "internet porn" addiction?

[Nebu]

There are physical manifestations of this disorder- I am suffering from a few of them currently. Since the arrival of my Elite, my right (fret) hand cramps easily, while whole left arm aches from playing Fight Night 3 for countless hours. I also have a nasty blister on my left thumb from same.

Addiction + decrepit body = owwies.

In medicine, those are called RSI's (repetitive stress injuries). While associated with video games, they are not exclusive to them. 

I'm betting 10:1 that this whole thing was drummed up as a way for the medical industry to make more money.  Get insurance to buy in and everyone wins. 

[Engels]

Somewhat apropos of the topic, from a link found on Amber Night's blog, a discussion with Warcraft Widows.

[cmlancas]

ARARJFDS54J$!

<Domestic Abuse>

Sorry. Yeah. That was freakin' hilarious.


Edit: Didn't see the domestic abuse. Wow.

[Righ]

I debated on where to stick this

See, that almost demands goatse.

[Furiously]

There are physical manifestations of this disorder- I am suffering from a few of them currently. Since the arrival of my Elite, my right (fret) hand cramps easily, while whole left arm aches from playing Fight Night 3 for countless hours. I also have a nasty blister on my left thumb from same.

Addiction + decrepit body = owwies.

As a married man, that is going to kill your sex life.

[WayAbvPar]

Definitely. I am too old to learn to use my right hand. How would I move the mouse?

[Stephen Zepp]

Doctors refuse to classify "Video Game Addiction" as a disorder (source: Gamasutra)

[Righ]

Well, good on them for not bowing to tabloid media frothing. Does anybody here find it entirely unsurprising that some groups of "concerned parents" want to classify excessive video game playing as addiction while they TiVo every fucking TV show between dusk and dawn so that they don't miss their soaps, dramas and reality shows?

[Paelos]

Well, good on them for not bowing to tabloid media frothing. Does anybody here find it entirely unsurprising that some groups of "concerned parents" want to classify excessive video game playing as addiction while they TiVo every fucking TV show between dusk and dawn so that they don't miss their soaps, dramas and reality shows?

Dad: Where did you learn to smoke this pot son!
Son: From you Dad! I learned it by watching you!

[Yegolev]

Postponed, I think.  Note the DSM revision will occur during an election year.

[Merusk]

Well, good on them for not bowing to tabloid media frothing. Does anybody here find it entirely unsurprising that some groups of "concerned parents" want to classify excessive video game playing as addiction while they TiVo every fucking TV show between dusk and dawn so that they don't miss their soaps, dramas and reality shows?

Not at all.. which is why I made the earlier snarky comment about lounging in front of the TV 5-8 hours a day not thinking.