Is Video Game Addiction a Psychiatric Disorder? AMA Report Seeks to
Declare It One
Thursday, June 21, 2007 0923 PDT
CHICAGO, Illinois -- 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% of American youngsters play video games and as many as 15% 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 2 years, video and Internet games transformed him
from an outgoing, academically gifted teen into a reclusive manipulator who
flunked 2 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 6 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 2 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.
___
On the Net:
On-Line Gamers Anonymous:
http://www.olganon.org
OTP: Is Video Game Addiction a Psychiatric Disorder? (Ask ASA members) 
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