Video game addiction
From Drug Rehab Wiki
While there is no question that video gaming may be addictive, some have lobbied to have it classified as a mental disorder. Many adolescents have been gaming their lives away at the expense of grades and social relationships. A leading council of doctors has sought to bring awareness to the issue as well as seek insurance coverage for those in search of treatment for their addiction.
The council pushed for The American Medical Association (AMA) to recommend that video game addictions be added to the updated list of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) to be published in 2012. The DSM is basically the Bible of mental disorders. The AMA conceded and it recommended adding it to the list – at least for a week anyway, before their recommendation was rescinded on the grounds that the area needed more study.
Of the nearly 90 percent of American kids who play video games, the AMA estimates that more than one in seven – or 5 million – are addicted to video games. These numbers are up from a 2009 study that was conducted in the U.S. to determine the extent of these addictions. The 2009 study surveyed 1,178 children aged 8-18, and found that one in twelve teens was addicted to video gaming at that time.
The 2009 study was led by Dr. Douglas Gentile, the director of research for the National Institute on Media and the Family and yielded some interesting results. Using similar diagnostic standards to that applied in the diagnosis of pathological gamblers, researchers were able to hone in on 11 different characteristics of compulsive behavior that point toward addiction.
Twelve percent of boys displayed addictive behaviors such as hiding their addiction, ignoring other areas of their life like family and schoolwork, experiencing withdrawal symptoms when games were taken away, and needing more and more play to feel the same level of excitement as they once got in the beginning. The results showed that ‘pathological gamers’ spent more years playing video games than those who were not addicted, played twice as much and had worse grades. It appears that the younger one is at the onset of gaming, the greater the risk for dependency.
The Internet is full of sad stories of video game addiction. One Texas mother said that video games turned her 17-year-old son into a monster. She says that he would threaten to harm them and would curse at them. She likened his behavior to that of an alcoholic. He started failing his classes and became a recluse who eventually had to be sent off to treatment.
Another Pennsylvania mother started an activist group after her 21-year-old son shot himself while playing an online video game. Since then, she has received an outpouring of e-mails from those wondering it they, too, are addicted. One thirteen year-old spoke of playing video games all day and said that he, too, felt suicidal.
Some experts say that these kids may have had behavioral problems such as anxiety or depression before they started playing videos, which may be true. But, video gaming appears to be exacerbating the problem, and simply blaming the kids seems like a copout.
There are many kids and adults coming forward seeking help for an addiction they don’t know how to control. Dr. Karen Pierce, a psychiatrist at the Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago says she meets with at least two children a week who struggle with video game addiction. Other doctors speak of kids who don’t sleep and even ignore their own hygiene for play. Though many in the entertainment industry may laugh off the idea that video gaming addiction be classified as a mental disorder, it does deserve further attention.
