Net abuse considered as a “clinical disorder”
It is time to seek medical help if you feel tense and angry because you cannot get online. A new Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) diagnostic manual approved over the weekend by psychologists has shown that Internet addiction now is considered a clinical disorder rather than a bad habit.
Two major symptoms have been identified—lingering online for more than six hours a day and having adverse reactions from not being able to get online. Based on the report, suffers usually have four main activities: Online gaming, Net pornography, excessive involvement in virtual social networking, too much Internet shopping and general cyber-surfing.
Tao Ran, a leading medical professional on addiction in China, said the manual would be the first of its kind in the world if the Ministry of Health officially approves it. He also headed the drafting of the manual. The ministry is highly likely to give the green light to the manual; and if so, China will be the first country to recognize IAD as a clinical disease, he told China Daily yesterday.
The American Psychiatric Association is debating whether to include IAD in the fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder. China can take the lead in this field because of its rise in the country, Tao said.
A report released in August by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee showed that about 10 percent of the country’s 40 million underage Net users are addicted to the web. Another research conducted by Internet media company InterActiveCorp last year showed that 42 percent of Chinese youngsters felt “addicted” to the web, while only 18 percent of Americans felt the same way.
Such kind of dependence on web has reportedly caused a lot of problems in real life. Beijing public security bureau showed that 76 percent of juvenile crime in the city is more or less Internet-related. This is more than western countries, Tao said.
However, IAD is curable. Since 2005, more than 3, 000 Internet addicts have been received by Military General Hospital of Beijing PLA, and up to 80 percent managed to get rid of the disease after three to six months of treatment. The treatment is to help those sufferers get back to their real lives by quarantining them from any web connection supplemented by psychological counseling.
According to Gao Wenbin, a researcher with the psychology institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the family care is the major reason for the rising number of young Net addicts. “Most children in China are the only ones in their families. They are told only to study hard, but no one really cares about their needs,” he said.
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