There might just be some truth to the notion that excessive indulgence in the “interweb” makes people a tad–just a wee bit–cuckoo.
Research being conducted by the Clalit Health Maintenance Organization, Israel’s largest HMO, points to a possible connection between unrestricted Internet use and the occurrence of psychotic episodes.
According to the Israeli paper Haaretz, researchers presented three cases of individuals who experienced psychotic episodes in the wake of intensive, prolonged Web surfing that included the development of a close online relationship with another person. All the three subjects were women between the ages of 30 and 50 with no significant psychiatric history. Two of them had no previous history of mental problems, although one had been treated for anxiety in the past.
Each of the three ladies had experienced an unsatisfactory intimate relationship in the past, and developed a dependent relationship with a man over the Internet without ever meeting him face-to-face.
As Haaretz explains:
The subjects’ psychoses included a total disconnection from reality, and in the case of one of the women also involved tactile hallucinations; she imagined that she could feel the man with whom she was having a “virtual relationship” touching her.
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Internet addiction is really real. In March, the American Journal of Psychiatry said that Internet addition is a compulsive-impulsive disorder and thus belongs in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Good thing for newly-minted addicts that now there’s therapy for such a thing.
The Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery has developed the first rehab program for Internet addicts, using the twelve-step program that’s been in place for over a decade. Treatment requires getting rid of an addict’s home computer. Unsurprisingly, Internet addicts resist this. In fact, “the person who is addicted to his or her computer is going to have the same ‘high’ as the drug addict who is about to go see their drug dealer,”said therapist Tonya Camacho.
Interestingly, Internet addicts tend to be divided by gender:
“The women who come here mostly have online shopping or chat-room addictions,” said Coleen Moore, the coordinator of resource development at the Illinois Institute. “The men we treat [suffer] from Internet gaming, gambling and pornography.”
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Articles about Internet addictions have been popping up (online) for a while now—along with advertisements for 12-step recovery programs—but the “disease” at first seemed tongue-in-cheek (and, actually, it was). Then, like so many mental illnesses these days, it became over-hyped. The would-be condition didn’t even make it into the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV)—the Bible of the mental health world—which includes everything from narcissism to 14 types of anxiety disorders.
But now Oregon Health Sciences University Psychiatrist Jerald Block wants to make sure Internet addiction gets some recognition. In an editorial in the March edition of the American Journal of Psychiatry, he argues that it should be included in the next edition of the DSM, due out in 2012, and laid out the standards of this deadly (no, really) new affliction. If you meet the following criteria, you too might be addicted to the internet: (more…)
