Addiction experts say video games NOT an addiction

Gamers need not worry about their favorite video games becoming crime and misbehavior scapegoats… for now. Doctors specializing in addiction and mental disorders attest that video games do not necessarily cause any form of addiction, saying that more research is needed before making such an assumption.

“Working with this problem is no different than working with alcoholic patients. The same denial, the same rationalization, the same inability to give it up,” Dr. Thomas Allen of the Osler Medical Center commented about formally recognizing video games as a possible cause of addiction. Listing video games as one possible cause of acute addiction would pave the way for insurance against video game addiction.

But addiction experts beg to differ. “There is nothing here to suggest that this is a complex physiological disease state akin to alcoholism or other substance abuse disorders,” said Dr. Stuart Glow, echoing the statements of other doctors who didn’t share the American Medical Association’s (AMA) sentiments regarding video games being the cause of mental illness. Psychiatrists also add that it wasn’t clear whether video games are addictive. “It’s not necessarily a cause-and-effect type issue. There may be certain kids who have a compulsive component to what they are doing,” said Dr. Louis Kraus of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

It is interesting to note that that committee who made the proposal eventually backed away from its position, instead asking the American Psychiatric Association to consider adding “video game addiction” to the next edition of its diagnostic manual, “American Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders”, due to be published in 2012.

Gamers need not worry about their favorite video games becoming crime and misbehavior scapegoats… for now. Doctors specializing in addiction and mental disorders attest that video games do not necessarily cause any form of addiction, saying that more research is needed before making such an assumption.

“Working with this problem is no different than working with alcoholic patients. The same denial, the same rationalization, the same inability to give it up,” Dr. Thomas Allen of the Osler Medical Center commented about formally recognizing video games as a possible cause of addiction. Listing video games as one possible cause of acute addiction would pave the way for insurance against video game addiction.

But addiction experts beg to differ. “There is nothing here to suggest that this is a complex physiological disease state akin to alcoholism or other substance abuse disorders,” said Dr. Stuart Glow, echoing the statements of other doctors who didn’t share the American Medical Association’s (AMA) sentiments regarding video games being the cause of mental illness. Psychiatrists also add that it wasn’t clear whether video games are addictive. “It’s not necessarily a cause-and-effect type issue. There may be certain kids who have a compulsive component to what they are doing,” said Dr. Louis Kraus of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

It is interesting to note that that committee who made the proposal eventually backed away from its position, instead asking the American Psychiatric Association to consider adding “video game addiction” to the next edition of its diagnostic manual, “American Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders”, due to be published in 2012.