A video-game addiction? AMA to vote on proposal

LOS ANGELES — Dave Taylor always knew his lust for playing "Fallout" and "Total Annihilation" bordered on the pathological. The video games would hold the West Hollywood software programmer in such a viselike grip that he often would play for 24-hour stretches, forestalling sleep, skipping meals and twisting himself in knots to delay bathroom breaks.

"It's super unhealthy," he said. "But man, I'm just so swept away in another world and so focused on my goals that I don't care. It hurts to be away from the game."

Now some doctors are lobbying to give his condition a formal medical diagnosis: video-game addiction.

The American Medical Association (AMA) is scheduled to debate such a proposal in Chicago on Sunday and vote on it next week. Backed by the Maryland State Medical Society, the proposal advocates that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, considered by many psychiatrists to be the final word for assessing mental illness, include video-game addiction.

The proposal also would have doctors exhort parents to curb their children's use of the Internet, television and video games to two hours a day. In addition, it would have the AMA, which has 250,000 members, lobby the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to improve the current system for rating video-game content.

Getting the AMA to deem video-game addiction worthy of its own psychiatric disorder is the first step in a process required to create a mental-health diagnosis. The ultimate arbiter is the American Psychiatric Association (APA), which publishes the authoritative DSM guide, currently in its fourth version. Getting APA approval could take years.

Game-industry executives said the measures are unsupported by scientific evidence.

"The American Medical Association is making premature conclusions without the benefit of complete and thorough data," said Michael Gallagher, president of the Entertainment Software Association, a trade group that represents video-game publishers.

But doctors in favor of the proposal said the condition needs to be recognized by the medical establishment so it can be properly treated.

It's happening in South Korea. In 2005, government officials there sent psychologists into Internet gaming cafes to warn players of addiction dangers after a man died of heart failure brought on by exhaustion and dehydration after a 50-hour binge playing "World of Warcraft." A spokesman for Blizzard Entertainment, the game's Irvine-based creator, declined to comment.

Game-industry representatives said the games might not be to blame, that the addiction might be related to an addictive personality or major life stressors.

"The causation question is not particularly well-supported," said Jamil Moledina, executive director of the Game Developers Conference, an annual event for professional game creators.

The proposal before the AMA also points out the inadequacies of current studies, citing "insufficient research to definitively conclude that video-game overuse is an addiction."

If the AMA approves the measure, it would present its case to the APA, which plans to begin discussing revisions to its mental-disorders manual in July. The organization has been lobbied to add Internet addiction and road rage as conditions but hasn't made a decision.