Should ‘Net Addiction’ become official?
p2pnet news | P2P:- Compulsive emailing and text messaging could be officially classified as illnesses, if a US psychiatrist has his way.
Net addiction, including “excessive gaming, sexual pre-occupations and e-mail/text messaging,” is a, “common compulsive-impulsive disorder that should be added to psychiatry’s official guidebook of mental disorders,” says the Ottawa Citizen, quoting the American Journal of Psychiatry.
Users, “experience cravings, urges, withdrawal and tolerance, requiring more and better equipment and software, or more and more hours online,” states Dr Jerald Block, a psychiatrist at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.
“Dr. Block says people can lose all track of time or neglect ‘basic drives,’ like eating or sleeping,” the story goes on.
About 86 per cent of Internet addicts have some other form of mental illness, “but unless a therapist is looking for it, Internet addiction is likely to be missed,” says Block in the Ottawa Citizen, which adds:
“British psychiatrists, reporting last year in the journal Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, say a ’significant minority’ – some estimate between five and 10 per cent of online users – are addicted to the Internet, and that while early research suggests most are highly educated, highly introverted males, more recent studies suggest the bulk of the problem is occurring among middle-aged women on home computers.”
Block should perhaps look to China for hints on progressive therapies.
“A 12-year-old boy receives electric shock treatment for his Internet addiction at the Beijing Military Region Central Hospital in Beijing Friday June 17, 2005,” said a p2pnet story last year, quoting an Associated Press picture caption.
In the main story, “There’s a global controversy over whether heavy Internet use should be defined as a mental disorder, with some psychologists, including a handful in the United States, arguing that it should be,” said AP, going on, “Backers of the notion say the addiction can be crippling, leading people to neglect work, school and social lives.
“But no country has gone quite as far as China in embracing the theory and mounting a public crusade against Internet addiction. To skeptics, the campaign dovetails a bit too nicely with China’s broader effort to control what its citizens can see on the Internet. The Communist government runs a massive program that limits Web access, censors sites and seeks to control online political dissent. Internet companies like Google have come under heavy criticism abroad for going along with China’s demands.”
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Also See:
Ottawa Citizen – Recognize Internet addiction as a mental illness, MD urges, March 17, 2008
p2pnet – Shocking China ‘Net addict’ cure, February 23, 2007\
Associated Press – China treats Internet ‘addicts’ sternly, February 22, 2007
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March 18th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
1. The internet is a medium, much like TV, newspaper, books, ect. Those who spend a long time on the internet are the equivalents to the following: Couch Potatos, [not sure for newspapers], bookworks, or other things.
2. China sucks at their censorship.