Ramblings of the Mad Cow

Addiction Experts Say Video Games Not An Addiction

Doctors backed away Sunday from a controversial proposal to designate video game addiction as a mental disorder akin to alcoholism, saying psychiatrists should study the issue more.

By Reuters
InformationWeek
Jun 25, 2007 12:49 PM

CHICAGO – Doctors backed away Sunday from a controversial proposal to designate video game addiction as a mental disorder akin to alcoholism, saying psychiatrists should study the issue more.

Addiction experts also strongly opposed the idea at a debate at the American Medical Association’s annual meeting.

They said more study is needed before excessive use of video and online games — a problem that affects about 10% of players — could be considered a mental illness.

“There is nothing here to suggest that this is a complex physiological disease state akin to alcoholism or other substance abuse disorders, and it doesn’t get to have the word addiction attached to it,” said Dr. Stuart Gitlow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine and Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

Read the rest here

I just want to know how you get to be an “addiction expert”!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 26th, 2007 at 7:14 am and is filed under Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.