Kimberly S. Young - Internet addiction: a handbook and guide to evaluation and treatment

INTERNET ADDICTION

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Copyright 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Internet addiction: a handbook and guide to evaluation and treatment / edited by
Kimberly S. Young and Cristiano Nabuco de Abreu.
p. ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-470-55116-5 (cloth : alk. paper);
ISBN 978-0-470-89224-4 (ebk); ISBN 978-0-470-89225-1 (ebk); 978-0-470-89226-8 (ebk)
1. Internet addiction. 2. Internet addictionTreatment. I. Young, Kimberly S.
II. Abreu, Cristiano Nabuco de.
[DNLM: 1. Behavior, Addictivepsychology. 2. Internetutilization.
3. Behavior, Addictivediagnosis. 4. Behavior, Addictivetherapy. WM 176 I615 2010]
RC569.5.I54I53 2010
616.8584dc22
2010018071

Foreword

Elias Aboujaoude, MD

Director, Impulse Control Disorders Clinic, Stanford University School of Medicine

THE INTERNET has exploded to become a daily part of our lives. For the majority of individuals, the Internet represents an incredible information tool and unquestionable opportunity for social connectedness, self-education, economic betterment, and freedom from shyness and paralyzing inhibitions. For them, the Internet enhances their well-being and quality of life. For others, however, it can lead to a state that appears to meet the DSM definition of a mental disorder described as a clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome associated with present distress or with a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom (American Psychiatric Association, 2000).

Dr. Kimberly Young, co-editor of this volume, was the first to bring clinical attention to this issue when she published a 1996 case report of problematic Internet use (Young, 1996). Her patient was a non--technologically oriented 43-year-old homemaker with a content home life and no prior addiction or psychiatric history, who within three months of discovering chat rooms was spending up to 60 hours per week online. The patient reported feeling excited in front of the computer and dysphoric and irritable when she would log off. She described having an addiction to the medium like one would to alcohol.

Since that report, a sizable and informative body of data originating in the East and West has accumulated over the past decade. Taken as a whole, the data tell a cautionary tale of the Internet's real potential to cause psychological harm. Research studies have documented a variety of subtypes of Internet-related problems such as online sexual compulsivity, Internet gambling, MySpace addiction, and video game addiction, which the American Medical Association estimates five million children suffer from and once considered calling gaming overuse an addiction in its revised diagnostic manual.

The problem of Internet addiction is still relatively new, and while research has documented what has become a growing health care problem, no current books pull this body of literature together. Internet Addiction: A Handbook and Guide to Evaluation and Treatment offers the first empirically based book to address this emergent field. This book summarizes the research conducted to date and proposes clinical, societal, and public health interventions that target the general population as well as adolescentsa group deemed at higher risk for developing the problems discussed. This book will enable practitioners to learn about the contemporary and current clinical implications, assessment methods, and treatment approaches in screening and working with clients who suffer from this new addictive disorder.

For a medium that has so radically and irreversibly changed the way we conduct our lives, the Internet's effects on our psychological health remain understudied, talked about more by sensationalism-driven reporters than practicing clinicians or expert researchers. And even as our understanding of basic Internet psychology lags, symptoms are changing as the technology evolvesfrom traditional browsers to smart phones that combine Internet capability with talking, texting, and video games. Simply stating that similar fears have been raised with every new technology misses the point: The immersive and interactive qualities of the virtual medium, combined with its sheer penetration into every aspect of life, make it different from all media forms that preceded it, and more prone to overuse or misuse. As our dependency on technology grows, this book adds to the clinical legitimacy and raises public and professional awareness of the problem that will enable future research in this evolving field to be conducted. This field is rapidly developing with new areas of scientific exploration, which is why research-driven books that educate us about the problems inherent in the virtual world are such a necessity.