WORLD / Health
Video game addiction: A new diagnosis?
(AP)
Updated: 2007-06-22 13:56
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.
Joyce Protopapas, poses at her home in Frisco, Texas, Wednesday, June 20,
2007, by a computer with the web site of the support group On-Line Gamers
Anonymous on the screen. [AP]
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.
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.
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