When she suggested to therapists that Michael had a video game addiction, “nobody was familiar with it,” she said. “They all pooh-poohed it.”
Last fall, the family found a therapist who “told us he was addicted, period.” They sent Michael to a therapeutic boarding school, where he has spent the past six months – at a cost of $5,000 monthly that insurance won’t cover, his mother said.
The AP report identifies this is all part of a larger, bolder effort:
The culprit isn’t alcohol or drugs. It’s video games, which for certain kids can be as powerfully addictive as heroin, some doctors contend.
A leading council of the nation’s largest doctors’ group wants to have this behavior officially classified as a psychiatric disorder.
Ricardo A. Tejeiro Salguero (at Universidad Nacional de Educaci?n a Distancia, Algeciras)and Rosa M. Bersab? Mor?n (at Universidad de M?laga, M?laga, Spain) have been doggedly on the trail of this for years now. Witness their study:
“Measuring problem video game playing in adolescents,” Ricardo A. Tejeiro Salguero, Rosa M. Bersab? Mor?n, Addiction, Volume 97 Issue 12 Page 1601-1606, December 2002.
Which brave researcher(s) will get the official credit for first declaring that video game playing is an addiction? The world waits, breathlessly, to find out.
(Thanks to investigator Kristine Danowski for bringing the AP report to our attention.)