few days ago I received a terrible news from China: in some communities to recover from Internet addiction, some teenagers were beaten and abused as if they were animals. But today comes the news the other part of the world, the United States, the first clinical (professionally recognized) that allows you to recover from "Internet addiction".
Heavensfield The Retreat Center in Fall City, Washington, claims to be the first center in the United States to treat patients addicted to Internet, video games and similar dependencies. The 45 days of enrollment in clinical costs "only" $ 14,500 (just over 10 000 €). The program is designed to help patients to break away from your computer through the combination therapy of social dialogue with traditional training courses, classes such as conversation techniques and appointments. Patients are then enticed to deal with breeding of goats, chickens and do maintenance work at home, a way to get some sort of guidance in the offline world.
The first patient of the clinic is a nineteen year old from Iowa, who has admitted to be "hooked" to the online game World of Warcraft for most of his day. Although it may seem extreme (and expensive) way to be "unplugged," Stuart Fischoff, a psychologist and editor of the Journal of Media Psychology, which has nothing to do with the direction Clinic, believes that the approach of rehabilitation would be helpful.
for patients in clinical situations, the comparison with domestic animals has been highly positive. The aim is to access the patient in the trial of gratification from something that does not require an Internet connection. So once that is given to the patient what he needs, likes and he does not judge the world more like a video game.
The program on the Web site states that "anywhere from 60 to 10% of the online population is dependent on one or more aspects of computer technology and the Internet." However, the emerging concept of "Internet addiction" is controversial. The term has not yet been recognized by the American Psychiatric Association as a disturbance and is not listed in the APA's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). But some experts have lobbied for its inclusion in the next revision of the manual, due out in 2012.
Ronald W. Pies, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Tufts University, argued that much of the debate is based on whether Internet abuse is a distinct disorder or a symptom of deeper psychological problems such as anxiety, depression or a disorder in the relations interpersonal, for which we can explain the problems that are repaid to the network. LiveScience the professor said:
The question is: we need another mess on our list, if the manifestations of Internet addiction may already be well described by rappresentatoe validated and better conditions ?
Although research is still very low, Internet addiction exists. A study by leading researchers at Stanford University found that more than one in eight Americans show signs of "problematic Internet use, such as the difficulty of having to stay away from PC for several days. But the study's authors acknowledged that the results were "too premature" to justify a medical diagnosis. The conclusions are based on a telephone survey on 2,513 adults, carried out in 2006.
Source: http://www.psicologiaesalute.com/
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