Bring on the next wave of nanny-statist junk science:
Dave Taylor always knew his lust for playing “Fallout” and “Total Annihilation” bordered on the pathological. The video games would hold the West Hollywood software programmer in such a viselike grip that he often would play for 24-hour stretches, forestalling sleep, skipping meals and twisting himself in knots to delay bathroom breaks.
“It’s super unhealthy,” he said. “But man, I’m just so swept away in another world and so focused on my goals that I don’t care. It hurts to be away from the game.”
Now some doctors are lobbying to give his condition a formal medical diagnosis: video-game addiction.
The American Medical Association (AMA) is scheduled to debate such a proposal in Chicago on Sunday and vote on it next week. Backed by the Maryland State Medical Society, the proposal advocates that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, considered by many psychiatrists to be the final word for assessing mental illness, include video-game addiction.
Followed, one could conceivably argue, by other social “addictions” (read: enjoyments) that might eventually be deemed a mental disorder. Like, say, Labor Day telethons, or “X-Files” marathons.
The proposal also would have doctors exhort parents to curb their children’s use of the Internet, television and video games to two hours a day. In addition, it would have the AMA, which has 250,000 members, lobby the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to improve the current system for rating video-game content.
Particularly frightening here is that doctor’s exhortations are often then used to justify nanny-state legislation — in this case, the duration that all children, even those who show no signs of “addiction,” be kept constrained in their use of television, video games, and the internet.
— presumably, though, a Henry James or NPR “addiction” wouldn’t concern the AMA quite so much. Because, you see, one man’s “addiction” is another man’s “passion”.
Getting the AMA to deem video-game addiction worthy of its own psychiatric disorder is the first step in a process required to create a mental-health diagnosis. The ultimate arbiter is the American Psychiatric Association (APA), which publishes the authoritative DSM guide, currently in its fourth version. Getting APA approval could take years.
Game-industry executives said the measures are unsupported by scientific evidence.
“The American Medical Association is making premature conclusions without the benefit of complete and thorough data,” said Michael Gallagher, president of the Entertainment Software Association, a trade group that represents video-game publishers.
But doctors in favor of the proposal said the condition needs to be recognized by the medical establishment so it can be properly treated.
Got that? Per the doctors “in favor of the proposal,” “we” must categorize video game enjoyment an addiction pathology before “we” can begin treating what we haven’t yet established needs treatment. Because only through preemptive treatment can we make sure that the pathology “we” haven’t bothered to show is an actual pathology in the first place is treated as a pathology.
Which, of course, makes us all that much safer.
Just as burning books makes us safer from the viral ideas with which they’re liable to infect us.
I say we start with the Constitution. Vile screed that it is.
Cured!
I guess that once you’ve accepted an “addition” model of any compulsive behavior, all that remains is to catalog the behaviors that are out there.
But they didn’t say anything about onanism, right? Right??Because if those eggheads thought prying my gun from my cold, dead hand would be a challenge…
It seems that medicalization has become one of the statists’ preferred weapons. Medicalize everything they want to subsidize and demand treatment for it at government expense; simultaneously, medicalize everything they want to ban and demand mandatory therapy, preferably with forcible incarceration, for all of it.
But then, the nation’s been on a medicalization binge since long before the video game.</b></a>
I suggest we first lobby to recognize as a mental illness the addiction to feel-good proposals like this one. Once that is recognized as a mental illness, we can come up with a proper treatment. It’s for the good of the children.
(Hey, is there a trick to putting in a carriage return here, i.e hitting the ENTER key to go a line or more down the page, for you young’uns who don’t know what a typewriter is. Everything I type is coming out as one big bloc o’ text.)
Well, I agree with your point in general, but what they are talking about is telling people that 24-hour video game immersion is unhealthy, and it’s not so hard to accept that.
And I think this:
…is the way pretty much any health-related condition is handled by "the medical establishment".
As long as this doesn’t turn into another excuse for Big Gub’mint to intervene in our lives, it seems reasonable enough. The bit about lobbying the FTC is where they cross the line, IMO.
Of course, your anxiety is completely understandable, being a purveyor of electronic crack yourself…
Dude! Pause button!
I’m sorry, Jeff, but can’t you somehow connect this up with the Best Masturbation Story Evah that I sent you the link for a couple days ago?
happyfeet #1
Gotta love this line from the site you linked, refering to the special WOW guild:
Pst Teebagz, Dikodomy or Darthcandy ingame to join. Get yer ass in here and help us cut up some horde!
Be very afraid…
Laguna Dave – They do not need an actual diagnosis of video game addiction to tell someone that playing video games for 24 hours straight is unhealthy. Most things are likely unhealthy if done 24 hours in succession.
I battled addictions to cocaine and alcohol for years, and am now almost 5 years clean. I was always under the impression that in order for there to be an actual addiction, there was a set of symptoms and behaviors associated. I bet I could quit playing Tiger Woods golf a fuckload easier and quicker than peruvian gold or coors light, jaeger, etc …
Viagra is to sex marathons as ______ is to video game marathons?
If someone does something so often in such a quantity that it interferes with their lives (like not working, eating, going to the bathroom, etc.), then that person is suffering from a mental illness of a sort close to obsessive-compulsive disorder. Some people don’t believe mental illnesses exist. I am not one of them. I have at least four relatives that suffer from various and sundry mental illnesses and let me tell you, mental illness does in fact exist. Practically by definition, a person that engages in some activity to the point that it interferes with their lives has a mental illness. The fact that certain behavior when performed in moderation (alcohol, drugs, sex, video games, watching TV, spending money, gambling, etc.) are perfectly normal and healthy does not mean that when done to excess so that it is self-destructive or in an obsessive and/or compulsive manner that’s just a choice. It’s not. It’s a problem with the brain’s normal functioning. And in most cases (not all) it can be ameliorated or even eliminated with the right combination of drugs.
Then the person should seek help. But many of these "addictions" are really nothing more than bursts of enthusiasm.
For instance, I played a Zork when it first came out compulsively until I finished the damn thing. Then I forgot about it.
If you want to combat obsessive compulsive disorder or "addictive personality disorder," have at it. But naming video games as a specific cause is like calling a scab the cause of a wound.
I never finished Zork.
They’ll call that one "acute discontinuous obsessive-compulsive disorder." Just you watch.
When I was a kid I was an obsessive reader. Would stay up half the night with a flashlight and be falling asleep at school the next day, and would sometimes stay up all night on weekends, reading for 16-20 hours straight. Being obsessed and lacking self-discipline is not the same thing as addiction.
Okay, how do we draw the line between what interferes with our lives and what doesn’t? I’m sure I’d live a healthier life if I was a vegan, but I’ll let go of my chicken sandwich when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. Does that mean I have an eating disorder because I eat meat? Sure, there are some people that have odd mental problems that should seek help, but the line is being moved way to far for my tastes. I have no problem with an expanded definition of addiction for DSM diagnosis purposes, but to create a special diagnosis for video game addiction (as opposed to TV addiction or sports addiction) is merely to stigmatize a particular activity.
Personally, I like my brain the way it is. It may be odd, but I’d rather be my odd self than be medicated into being normal. I personally do not want to see kids medicated for being abnormal, even if someone wants to classify Geekophobia as a mental illness.
To answer happyfeet’s question:
Viagra : sex marathons :: Dew : video game marathons
Ah, and where the medical nannies tread, the plaintiff’s bar will soon follow. I hear those Sony fellers have deep pockets.
I have also been known to play video games for long stretches on some weekends, if nothing much else is going on, but lately have been working 8 to 12 hour stretches on weekends helping a friend build a race car. I wonder if the SCCA should be getting nervous?
"The called me MAD at the Sorbonne! MAD!"
Hmmmm.
Ok so the AMA gets it declared a mental illness then anybody who wants to stay home and play xbox all day long has to do is claim this mental illness?Well. Well. Well. Slackers of the world unite! All you have to lose is the 9-5 grind while you play Halo25.
The latest issue of <i>PC Gamer</i> has a pretty good, if not terribly scholarly, article on MMO addiction. (No link, sorry, print only) One of the more salient points is that the types who play WoW or EverCrack suffer from a compulsive vice addictive disorder. There are several websites (e.g. <a href="http://www.wowdetox.com/">wowdetox.com</a>) that supposedly provide some kind of group support to those "suffering" from this compulsion. The damage done to their lives is very real–divorces, weight probems, etc–but I’m not sure it warrants its own entry in the DSM.
It’s not ridiculous to suggest that game designers might look to build in points of closure or semi-closure… I lost an entire weekend once when I innocently slipped in the first dvd of Prison Break season one.
Sort of dittoing others, not every mistake or bad behavior is an illness, nor requires therapy. On the other hand, if therapy wasn’t so institutionalized and there was some sort of "life advice counseling" for people whose friends and families are not great influences it might help. I’m not talking about another government program, not essentially anyway. Sometimes, when people ask, they can get good advice on online forums, from their online "friends." And bad advice, but there you are. I second happyfeet’s suggestion – not only would a more "episodic" online gaming world give people a chance to take a breather, they’d probably replace some of the compulsive gamers’ money they lose with new customers like me who avoid MMORPGs almost precisely because they demand massive time investment to make any progress – after the first X levels it all turns into long drawn-out grinding sessions, and what could be more boring?
Oh, and I second the call for paragraph structure, or previews at least.<br><br> I was an Everquest beta tester, BTW.<p><p>Paragraphs, mmmmm.
One   <br /> More <br /> Try.
Didn’t they used to list homosexuality in the DSM?
I’m just sayin’, is all…
Because science and medicine are something to be voted on.
All your
breaks
are belong to
us.
Someone
set up us
the
line feed…
Well it looks like putting a non-breaking space token between open and close paragraph tags in the html editor will generate a visible paragraph break.
Like so: <p> <\p>
But that’s not real convenient.
Apparently all the other text has to be inside paragraph tags too
for <p> <\p> to work…
<p>Kkh.</p> <p>Yes, mental disorders are real, but "lack of self-discipline" is not a mental disorder. Hell, this is the same APA that was getting all the sexual "disorders" out of the book because they’re just "lifestyle choices" now, right? The more they wish to undermine "dated" moral codes in favor of acceptance, the more they’ll need to classify this kind of behavior as a "disorder," because the moral framework that dictates work over play (and more broadly, deprivation over pleasure NOW for benefits LATER) has dissolved and increasing numbers of "normal" adults will begin "suffering" from it.</p> <p>At least, that’s how I see it. Can I just cash in my shares in life on earth and go home now? (Add that question to the "things to ask God" list for me.)</p>
Augh! *throws up hands* I give up.
Pellegri – did you use the "toggle HTML source" button before you wrote your comment?
This comment engine learns. When you get it to do what you want just once, it adapts, and that tactic never works again. Someone needs to perform an exorcism or something.
Case in point. I tried to put a paragraph break between those two sentences, using the HTML editor toggle thingie. Didn’t work, did it?
Kkh. Yes, mental disorders are real, but “lack of self-discipline” is not a mental disorder. Hell, this is the same APA that was getting all the sexual “disorders” out of the book because they’re just “lifestyle choices” now, right? The more they wish to undermine “dated” moral codes in favor of acceptance, the more they’ll need to classify this kind of behavior as a “disorder,” because the moral framework that dictates work over play (and more broadly, deprivation over pleasure NOW for benefits LATER) has dissolved and increasing numbers of “normal” adults will begin “suffering” from it. At least, that’s how I see it. Can I just cash in my shares in life on earth and go home now? (Add that question to the “things to ask God” list for me.)
you’re right – things that worked before, it’s not the same…
it’s detecting duplicates now, though … it’s evolving…
I didn’t, no. …oh! There’s the button. Okay.Testing!
OK, here’s another challenge to the comment-engine-from-hell.
See, nothing to it.
Here’s what I typed above, in the HTML window:
<p>OK, here’s another challenge to the comment-engine-from-hell.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>See, nothing to it.</p>
We’re working on your problems — though by "we" I mean others who know what the problems might be.
For me, it’s wysiwyg here in the comment box. So it is a built in preview, in effect, given that it spell
chexsas you write, and the format in the box should, in theory, be the format that shows up when you post.Provided you are using the little buttons above, and not your own html, I think.
And I simply hit hard return to get a paragraph break.
Maybe I’m just too stupid to get the thing to work incorrectly?
The only way I have been able to get paragraph breaks is the alternate the paragraph indent thing. Hard breaks show up as such in the comment box, but when I post it all gets crammed together. At least that is the way it has been, these three sentences were double-spaced, let’s see what happens.
Still the same.
Using only the buttons given with the comments engine. Two line breaks: Bolded Two line breaks again Italic: ItalicinotItalci. Underline Strikethrough
I feel sorry for those that are addicted. I know that I enjoy video games and would love to play more often, but I still have a life outside the game.
P.s.
Those who are addicted please don’t take that as a rude comment.
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