#CURE MY ADDICTION GALLERY MANUAL#

“I would say that it certainly merits exploration,” says George Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.Ĭlassification as a psychiatric diagnosis in the DSM requires clearing a very high bar, one in place to prevent the proliferation of mental disorders, Petry notes. But the group did identify IGD in an appendix as worthy of more study and proposed a set of criteria for diagnosis. Video games were also considered for inclusion, but the working group decided there wasn’t enough evidence-yet ( 4).

The authors of DSM-5, released in 2013, created a category for “substance-related and addictive disorders” that included gambling disorder, the first behavioral addiction to appear in the same class as substance addictions ( 3). It simply doesn’t require the ingestion of drugs.” “But I think the evidence is pretty overwhelming now that all kinds of things can change neurochemistry.

“I think there are some people that are still holding out,” says Howard Shaffer, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in Boston, and director of the Division on Addiction at the Harvard-affiliated Cambridge Health Alliance. On the other hand, pathological gambling was considered an inability to resist impulses, along with disorders like pyromania (setting things on fire), kleptomania (compulsive stealing), and trichotillomania (compulsive hair-pulling).īut over the past 15 years, the idea that it is possible to become addicted to a behavior has gained traction, especially after neuroimaging began to show that behaviors such as gambling could activate the brain’s reward system in the same way as drugs. Alcohol and substance abuse were simply called alcohol- or substance-related disorders, and a diagnosis hinged on the presence of symptoms such as craving, tolerance, and withdrawal.

#CURE MY ADDICTION GALLERY MANUAL#

Before 2013, “addiction” did not appear in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the working dictionary of mental health. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the word “addiction” in a medical setting referred strictly to substances, such as alcohol, tobacco, and drugs, if it was used at all. “Personally, I think it really likely is a mental disorder, but I think we need to better quantify what it is we’re studying.” “I don’t know that there’s any consensus in this field right now,” says Nancy Petry, a professor of medicine at the University of Connecticut in Farmington, who was on the American Psychiatric Association committee that considered adding IGD to the latest diagnostic manual but decided to wait.

But many worry that labeling teenagers “addicts” will pathologize behavior that is normal, and lead to false epidemics of other compulsive behaviors, such as sex and eating. Can a game be considered an intoxicant? The neurological evidence is growing that games may act like traditional substances of abuse, with compelling similarities between the effects of drugs and of video games on the minds of users ( 2). Whether video games can produce a true addiction in a clinical or scientific sense is still highly controversial. “A lot of child psychologists say, we’ve got parents living in fear of their kids,” says Tam. Whether there is a cause-and-effect relationship remains unclear.Īs in the case of patients diagnosed with other addictions, so-called Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) affects those around them, too: in extreme cases, it has reportedly resulted in household violence by children against their parents, who are trying to take away their games, according to Philip Tam, a psychiatrist with the not-for-profit Network for Internet Investigation and Research Australia in Sydney. Some evidence associates video game addiction with depression, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and obsessive-compulsive disorder ( 2). The adverse effects of teens’ “addiction” to the games are not just time lost studying or socializing with their peers. Many governments already see excessive, compulsive playing of online video games, such as League of Legends and World of Warcraft, as a serious adolescent public health issue and have established treatment facilities, especially in China and South Korea ( 1). But some researchers remain unconvinced that gaming can constitute an “addiction.” Image courtesy of Shutterstock/eranicle. Mounting neurological evidence suggests that video games may act like traditional substances of abuse.

Cure my addiction gallery