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Recognize Internet addiction as a mental illness, MD urges

Users experience cravings, withdrawal, psychiatrist says

Sharon Kirkey, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Monday, March 17, 2008

Compulsive e-mailing and text messaging could soon become classified as an
official brain illness.

An editorial in this month's issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry
says Internet 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.

Like other addicts, users experience cravings, urges, withdrawal and
tolerance, requiring more and better equipment and software, or more and
more hours online, according to 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. Relapse rates are high, he writes, and some people may need
psychoactive medications or hospitalization.

Dr. Block says about 86 per cent of Internet addicts have some other form
of mental illness, but that unless a therapist is looking for it, Internet
addiction is likely to be missed.

He argues that the phenomenon warrants being included in the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, psychiatry's official
dictionary of mental illnesses. The next edition is due out in 2012. A
draft is expected to be available for public comment next year.

But some say the research into Internet addiction is in its infancy and
they wonder how doctors decide when computer use crosses the line from the
normal to the pathological.

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.

Some use computers like they would drugs or alcohol as a way to escape
reality, the researchers say. Addicts may be addicted to everything from
the sheer act of typing, to chat rooms, online shopping or
three-dimensional, multiplayer games users have described as "heroinware."

According to addiction therapist John Macdonald, of the Centre for
Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, computer use becomes problematic
when the behaviour starts affecting people's lives.

For example, is the person pre-occupied with getting, and staying, online?
"If they're not able to engage in it, is it emotionally upsetting for
them?

"The real proof in the pudding: is the amount that you do causing any
problems in your life?" Mr. Macdonald says.

China and South Korea are already addressing the problem.

After 10 people died in Internet cafés in South Korea from
cardiopulmonary-related deaths -- at least seven reportedly due to online
gaming -- the government trained more than 1,000 counsellors in the
treatment of Internet addiction, Dr. Block writes.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2008