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Doctor Urges AMA To Classify Gaming Addiction
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Jun 14, 2007 02:47 PM
from the we-who-are-about-to-grind-for-xp-salute-you dept.
from the we-who-are-about-to-grind-for-xp-salute-you dept.
Doctor Mario writes "The AMA has issued a set of findings and recommendations (Word document) which follow a lengthy look at possible connections between gaming and violence, as well as gaming addiction. Ars Technica has a very good summary of the report, which suggests that gaming addiction is likely to be a subset of Internet addiction 'as it most frequently occurs in players of MMORPGs. In both of these addictions, the current definition is currently informal — the described symptoms actually most closely resemble pathological gambling, rather than an addiction. In either case, the report notes, "there is currently insufficient research to definitively conclude that video game overuse is an addiction."' The report also recommends that Internet and videogame addiction be included in a revision to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders."
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Science: Experts Oppose Classifying Gaming Addiction As Mental Disorder 301 comments
News.com reports that despite earlier rumblings that addiction to videogames could be classified a mental disorder similar to alcoholism, experts have stepped back from that analysis. The decision by the AMA is that psychiatrists should make further efforts to study the phenomenon, while addiction experts strongly opposed the idea at the organization's annual meeting. "Even before debate on the subject began, the committee that made the proposal backed away from its position, and instead recommended that the American Psychiatric Association consider the change when it revises its next diagnostic manual in 5 years. The psychiatrist group has said if the science warrants, it could be considered for inclusion in the next diagnostic manual, which will be published in 2012. While occasional use of video games is harmless and may even help with some disorders like autism, doctors said in extreme cases it can interfere with day-to-day necessities like working, showering or even eating."
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Games: Defining Video Game Addiction 354 comments
1Up has a feature discussing where the line should be drawn when it comes to game addiction. The author speaks to researcher Neils Clark about some of the common characteristics of addiction, and how the high level of immersion in many modern games contributes to the mind's ability to drown out mundane tasks. We've discussed game addiction many times over the past several years. Quoting:
"If we're not all dribbling addicts, then why are we playing so much? Clark puts this down to a theory proposed by The Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien — primary and secondary worlds. The primary world is our own real life. The secondary is the fictional world: literature, film, videogames, and so on. 'It used to be that the imagery and artistic intent had to be fully available before you could really "find" yourself in a written story,' Clark says. 'Immersion has progressed to the point where entering a world [inside a game] is almost automatic. At the point we're at, playing healthy not only means understanding immersion but [also] recognizing that these secondary worlds are designed to be more fulfilling than the primary. Learning to balance them is its own technology. It's something that humankind is in a process of developing, even if on a subconscious level for most gamers.'"
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Hoping the Proposal is Rejected (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hoping the Proposal is Rejected (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a distinct difference between someone who is participating in escapist behavior and a particular substance or activity being addictive. In the first case, whatever the focus or expression of the escapist behavior is largely incidental. Take the video games away and the person will find some other way of escaping. That may turn out to be reading all day and refusing to interact socially, self cutting, huffing glue, or whatever else may appeal to their personalities. Further, it is very arbitrary in what we would term "destructive" escapism and "constructive" escapism. For example, the socially defunct or depressed teenager who chooses books is viewed as a studios bookworm even though the root cause of the behavior is not any different nor ultimately any more beneficial to the individual.
For anyone who cannnot clearly see the difference I have a case study. Take a completely average, well adjusted, completely within the bounds or normalcy guy or gal from the street. Now force them to injest considerable quantities of Nicotine, Alcohol, Cocaine or Heroin over an extended period of time. That "extended period" might only need to be a week or two. Now take it away. What happens? You got it, this completely well adjusted individual will go through severe withdrawal. It will be physical, it will be accompanied but not limited to a significant mental craving, and it will be extremely unpleasant and in some cases life threatening. Take the same well adjusted individual and force them to play Warcraft and nothing of the sort will occur. Nada, ziltch. Depending on his general disposition toward games they may even dislike it quite a bit and be very thankful and relieved when they're allowed to discontinue their doses.
I've known first hand a good amount of people with this so called "game addiction" and in every single case they were running from life not toward games. Conversely, I've interacted with people with real addictions and though many were running from life there was a not insignificant number who were just hard partiers who woke up one day and realized they had a monkey on their back that they couldn't shake without help.
If only these nut jobs who want to term anything and everything under the sun as "addictive" could be brought to realize the truth of this they'd see that not every negative human behavior can be blamed on an external cause.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The difference between physical and psychological addiction are indeed distinct, which is why they have different names.
That is an excel
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People predisposed to addiction CAN get addicted to all kinds of things you might not expect. Should we write them off?
Re:I'm waiting for the stories ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:I'm waiting for the stories ... (Score:4, Insightful)
it should be under a more general descriptor like "addictive personality disorder" or something rather than coming up with 2^n differant description for what is the same thing at the core.
Parent
Oh, Come on.... (Score:4, Funny)
I'm completely in control.
Re:Oh, Come on.... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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Slashdot the game. There, fixed that for you.
I mean, you've got the unwashed masses (no karma bonus), the slightly privileged class (karma bonus), the undesirable element (karma anti-bonus) and the unmentionable class (anonymous cowards, emphasis on coward) not to mention the nobility (editors) and the monsters (also the editors) and the king (Taco).
Guess that makes OSDL god in this context :)
Obligatory Penny Arcade (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not playing right now
In all seriousness games aren't an addicting substance. I've played games for a long time now, on and off. I've never found it difficult to stop playing, never needed any sort of help. I often find it hard to keep playing a game after playing it for more than a week or so. Maybe some people are getting addicted to game, and those are probably the same people who can get addicted to just about anything thanks to some deeper psychological pr
Re:Obligatory Penny Arcade (Score:4, Interesting)
While I don't think game addiction necessarily needs a distinct category in the DSM, there is a difference between the hobbies you mention and potentially addictive activities. Namely, the latter involve persistant and compelling reasons to engage in the activity. Aside from delayed gratification (which can be more satisfying than instant gratification anyway), there typically isn't a downside to waiting to see a movie or read a book. In a MMORPG, on the other hand, there are countless disincentives to allow the real world clock to tick without accumulating
Note also both the similarity between, and integration of, gambling and MMOGs. Each exhibit similar characteristics: They are ostensibly social activities. They never end; there is always another potential goal*. They offer steady but random rewards and punishments. There also appears to be a large overlap of gamblers and gamers: From "guess the number," to full-blown casinos in Second Life, gambling is ever popular among the gaming population.
I'm not making a value judgement on any of these activities -- I enjoy gambling, and I've enjoyed years of MMOG playing -- but to say that they are no different from avid reading or moviegoing is disingenuous. If they were not fundamentally different, they wouldn't be so seductive, and it's not difficult to see how people can be drawn in to MMOGs to the detriment of all else.
* The fatal flaw in many MMOGs is that they do, in fact, run out of goals if a player is dedicated enough, which is why high-level guilds tend to have a high turnover of players who become disillusioned once they actually "have it all."
Parent
how about the dealing with real violence ... (Score:2)
the problem is doctors addicted to affluence
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Maybe look into how the consumer is out of the insurance-drug company-doctor-government loop on medical insurance, and how it doesn't truly subsist of a free market.
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If you think the doctors are the reason for the lack of medical insurance, you're sadly mistaken. You're attacking the same people that are shutting down their practices instead of paying ludicrous amounts for malpractice insurance, due to frivolous lawsuits.
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1-2 hours total daily screen time? (Score:2)
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Addiction? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's just hard to identify, due to the subjective methods of determining cases.
Given an activity someone finds sufficiently enjoyable, combined with a predisposition for addiction, can lead to (this is the important part) neurophysiological changes in the areas of the brain known to play a role in addiction (Nucleus Accumbens, Ventral Tegmental Area, etc).
There might not be withdrawal symptoms associated with certain drug uses, but *PHYSICAL* changes to these areas constitute addiction IMHO. Some pe
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Re:Addiction? (Score:5, Informative)
So if you watch TV or play games for a couple hours a night, but don't mind too much when you can't and it doesn't interfere with your life, that's not an addiction.
However, if you spend 48 hours straight playing a game and die of a venous thrombosis, or lose your job because you can't stand to miss your soaps, that probably is.
Parent
Re:Addiction? (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember, there is a fine line between a "hobby" and "mental illness."
Parent
Re:Addiction? (Score:4, Insightful)
Their criteria for declaring something a medial disorder is based on 1) rhetoric and 2) political correctness. Why did the AMA delist homosexuality as a medical disorder? Better yet, why was it classified as a disorder in the first place? In both cases the answer is that the AMA bowed to social and political pressure. More direct examples of this sort of thing can be seen when psychiatrists are called in by politicians and companies to label opponents or employees as insane. When the definition of a "disorder" is based solely and completely on a wordy, obscure, and vaguely written paper by a "prominent" author, you can basically tag anyone as being insane.
It's a pity. There's some good work done in the sphere of mental health. People helping trauma victims based on studies of objective data being the best example. But most of the field is weighed down by extremely abstract humanities doctorates posing as scientists. The situation isn't helped by the neuroscience community waving about brain scans with no concrete idea of anything that's going on, and devouring the first scrap tossed to them by the entrenched ideas of psychoanalysis.
Bottom line, we need to stop treating psychiatrists and psychologist as scientists. They're not. At best they are practitioners, like doctors, or humanities researchers, like historians, though frankly that's a disparagement to both those groups. In the main the mental health community consists of amateurs posing as professionals. Their opinions should hold no weight in a court of law. The fact that the do is undermining our system of justice.
Parent
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Video lottery terminal addiction is a growing problem -- the things are even more addictive than regular gambling. They're a type of video game.
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Ever played nethack [nethack.org]?
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So my question is, why isn't anyone doing something about your mom in laws behavior?
That's like asking, "why don't they take the bottle out of the alcoholic's hands?"
It's not that simple when you're dealing with an adult making their choices.
Seriously... (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anyone know how non-accidental disabilities... like drug addictions... are handled in such cases? I've never been a drug addict, but surely you can't collect disability pay for it.
A more interesting question (Score:2)
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Politically Expedient Research (Score:5, Interesting)
Just studying addictive personalities however is not as sensational or politically expedient as the more sensational avenue of linking games to violence and anti-social behavior. I'm sure a researcher can get more money by studying the latter.
It's Not An Addiction (Score:4, Funny)
Hmm, does the AMA say anything about Slashdot addiction?
It's a habit, not an addiction. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
An addiction to something you find pleasurable may not have a few negative withdrawal effects, but EVERYTHING else is the same, including the PHYSICAL changes in the brain.
I wish I could provide a compelling argument for you, but you obviously have no background in neuroscience, and would thus have no idea what was being argued.
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why an addiction? (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's your tinfoil hat thought of the day: at least one major drug company is currently working on drugs intended to treat nonspecific 'compulsive' behaviors, and the list of populations they're targeting includes gamblers, overeaters, and gamers. Bit creepy, or is it just me?
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The same thing that separates feeling depressed from a depressive disorder. Interference and inability to carry out daily activities. Like someone who plays WoW 4 hours a night but otherwise has a normal life is fine, but someone who quits his job by not showing up, ignores his family and loses friendships over WoW would be someone who could probably use a psychiatric consult.
Ugh (Score:4, Insightful)
So I guess my point was that people, in general, have this completely backwards. It comes down to whether or not a person can see the difference between fantasy and reality violence. When one cannot tell the difference, it is indicative of something other than an overabundance of video gaming.
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I'll go out on a limb here and call it bad parenting.
My country's paying for my therapy... (Score:2)
But we got screwed anyway:
>>The choice was Universal Health Care or Cheap Games. Canada obviously made the wrong choice, so next time you're visiting the doctor, remember, you could have had cheap games instead. --deadend, Evil Avatar forums.
My name is UnknowingFool (Score:2)
Hi, my name is UnknowingFool
and I play WoW.
If it were respected then it wouldn't be an issue (Score:4, Insightful)
Diagnosis (Score:2)
Finding a definition will already be impossible (Score:3, Insightful)
If so, I'm addicted to living.
Ok, that was a blatant one, but it should show that different "things to be addicted to" deserve different definitions. You can't just say "When you do something for X hours you're addicted to it, no matter what it is". When I drink for 3 hours straight I'm most likely on the floor. When I run for 3 hours I'm hopefully near a hospital. When I play for 3 hours I'm mostly relaxed.
Then there's very different kinds of people. I spend about 60 hours a week reading assembler code. Am I addicted to movs and nops? No, I'm employed. It's my job, and I like it enough that I do actually do the same after I go home. Could I stop? I do every year for a month, and I barely miss it. There's so much else to do.
Maybe if there's nothing else anymore that interests you could be a suitable definition. But then again, there are quite a few very healthy people who have a narrow field of interests. Otherwise, I am pretty sure there are millions if not billions of people addicted to TV.
The whole "addiction" theme already fails at its definition. Of course, the subject line is false. They WILL come up with some kind of definition. It will be as arbitrary, indifferent and false as pretty much every other definition of addiction.
Great! (Score:4, Funny)
I see merit behind it, but doubt it's usefulness. (Score:4, Interesting)
We have the same situation with autism currently. So many kids are being diagnosed with them, but is it merely a case of a genetic defect that is all of a sudden present in them or is it a case of a diagnosis that is just too broad and doesn't realize the term "borderline" really should be "is similar but not really". Personally the research and the cases I've seen seems to be the later. That doesn't mean there isn't autism, but the severe cases are getting grouped with the "normal" cases of anti-social kids who have imaginary friends (imagine a kid having that?)
Even the behaviors involved with the identification of the conditions are often at odds with itself.
But even this makes me believe gaming addiction is ripe for another "autism" where there's people with serious problems (read "people who play themselves to death", aka the two Korean gentlemen I read about 6 months ago.) who really do need help, will once again get clumped in with anti-social people who'd prefer to play a game than go to a bar. Do I play games more than I should? Yeah, but I do it rather then going out all night and partying. Losing a job because you're playing WoW is an issue, but preferring to have fun playing games doesn't qualify as a disorder, just as reading too many fiction books isn't one. Sadly the AMA tends to broaden their definitions too much to if you play more than 2 hours of games a day you're sick and need help.
Comparing it with Alcohol Classes (Score:5, Interesting)
Phase one: Take it or leave it
You can stand to be without it and while you do enjoy when you do get to play you only do it when you have free time that you might have spent playing other games. Your odds of ever getting to 70 are pretty low and are likely to have a few low level alts.
Phase two: Anticipation
You look forward to playing WoW when you are leaving work or places where you cannot play. You spend some downtime when you can't play the game looking up some items or character builds and other information about the game. You probably talk about WoW with some friends or co-workers who play. This would be your normal player of WoW who will likely hit 70 some day, make some twinks, and even join a light raiding guild. If anything else comes up with friends, work, or family you will
Phase three: Occupation
You spend almost every waking moment thinking about WoW in some fashion. Typically work and social life are impacted as you re-prioritize your choices and life around WoW. You probably join a raiding guild and have set times everyday when you login and play. WoW is the only game you spend any serious time playing. Anything that interrupts those things will highly annoy you and you are likely to alienate yourself from others who do not play as to minimize distractions. Relationships with friends and family begin to become strained. You have 2-3 70s and clock in at least 30 hours a week.
Phase four: Complete Psychological Addiction
Note: This would be physical addiction for drugs
Your life is WoW. Every activity in your life revolves around it. You might seek out a job that gives you the best hours for raiding, pass up on promotions that would interfere with it, or even quit your job altogether. Your friends and family rarely see you and you grow distant from everyone who is not a member of your guild. Health and productivity go down the toilet after weeks and weeks of little sleep and complete occupation with the game take its toil. You lose many of your friends and any relationships where your partner does not play WoW as well. You may leave your guild as they are no longer "hardcore" enough for you and either start your own or join a very serious raiding guild. If not you are likely a guild leader or very high up in your guild.
Maybe I should start a "Prime for Gaming" support group.
Television addiction? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is that an addiction or a mental illness?
Or is that acceptable because the boomers grew up with it, but not with video games?
Re:They are addictive, let's get a better cure tho (Score:2)