News > AMA Rethinks Videogame Addiction Classification
June 25, 2007
It appears that the American Medical Association (AMA) has rethought its proposal to classify videogame addiction as a disease along the same lines as alcoholism and drug addiction, and are no longer moving forward with the effort. They are now simply recommending to the American Psychiatric Association that more research be conducted regarding the matter.
Said Dr. Stuart Gitlow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine and Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York, "There is nothing here to suggest that this is a complex physiological disease state akin to alcoholism or other substance abuse disorders, and it doesn't get to have the word addiction attached to it."
The issue is not one of direct causality, and as a successful former student of psychology, I will be the first to recapitulate the psychologist's maxim, "correlation does not imply causation." Sure, some individuals who play video games exhibit behaviors that might suggest addiction, but the may also display those same behaviors while eating cereal or reading the morning newspaper. This issue is not as concrete as the AMA has made it seem, and now they are clearly beginning to understand that fact.
*Eddie R Inzauto - Senior Editor, GameWad.com
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