Gaming and internet addiction

Meet the patient

A 15-year-old has not attended school in six weeks. He sleeps from 6am until mid-afternoon and plays a ranked online shooter through the night. His mother unplugged the router last Tuesday; he put his fist through a bedroom door.^[11][16]

His grades collapsed across the last year, he no longer sees the two offline friends he had, and several hundred dollars of his mother's card has gone on in-game boxes. He tells you, quite reasonably, that all of his friends play as much as he does.^[9][11]

His father wants him admitted for a "game detox". His mother wants a diagnosis. The examiner wants neither: which manual are you using, what makes this a disorder rather than a hobby, and what have you not yet diagnosed that is holding the whole pattern in place?^[1][2][11]

References16ShowHide

1. [1]Saunders JB, Hao W, Long J, King DL, Mann K, Fauth-Bühler M, et al. Gaming disorder: Its delineation as an important condition for diagnosis, management, and prevention J Behav Addict, 2017.PMID 28816494
2. [2]Petry NM, Rehbein F, Gentile DA, Lemmens JS, Rumpf HJ, Mößle T, et al. An international consensus for assessing internet gaming disorder using the new DSM-5 approach Addiction, 2014.PMID 24456155
3. [3]Brand M, Young KS, Laier C, Wölfling K, Potenza MN Integrating psychological and neurobiological considerations regarding the development and maintenance of specific Internet-use disorders: An Interaction of Person-Affect-Cognition-Execution (I-PACE) model Neurosci Biobehav Rev, 2016.PMID 27590829
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10. [10]King DL, Delfabbro PH, Wu AMS, Doh YY, Kuss DJ, Pallesen S, et al. Treatment of Internet gaming disorder: An international systematic review and CONSORT evaluation Clin Psychol Rev, 2017.PMID 28458097
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