Have you ever wondered why your smartphone is so hard to put down or why you can’t resist reading that incoming text? Why do you suddenly feel vulnerable when you find yourself without your smartphone — a condition described with terms such as “nomophobia” or no-mobile-phone phobia?
Today’s modern technology addictions include being hooked on Internet surfing, obsessing over social media and being unable to put down the smartphone. At the heart of each of these is one addictive thing: information. If you struggle with spending too much time online, texting, updating your status or other modern tech diversions, you are probably…
Although behavioral addictions have become increasingly accepted as genuine conditions—just like drug or alcohol addictions—in recent years, Internet addiction is still struggling to find widespread acceptance. Does the lack of recognition of the condition in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM-V, commonly called the “bible” of mental…
Internet addiction is a commonly used term for an unofficially defined form of non-substance-based behavioral addiction that centers on a personally and socially damaging pattern of Internet use. A comorbid disorder is a condition that appears at the same time as one or more additional health problems and contributes to a disproportionate worsening of general…
On November 21, two experts from Promises Behavioral Health – renowned physician and nutrition scientist Pamela Peeke, MD, MPH, FACP, and sexual addiction clinician and tech/sex/relationship author Robert Weiss, LCSW, CSAT-S – will present clinical best practices at a symposium on technology and addiction sponsored by Pepperdine University in Malibu.
The right hand was a dead giveaway. When a 31-year-old man reached for his temple and tapped, he wasn’t just strumming his fingers in deep thought. He was going for his Google Glass. One problem. He wasn’t wearing the high-tech device.
Any psychiatric disorder is challenging enough, but there’s a single disorder that frequently makes the sufferer even more vulnerable to additional psychiatric problems. A new study from the McGill University Department of Psychiatry in Montreal, Canada, has found that people who have suffered from depression are more likely to develop an Internet addiction.
The idea of a behavioral addiction calls many people’s accepted definition of addiction into question. Addictions are not limited to substances, with gambling addiction, sex addiction and Internet addiction being examples of addictions to specific patterns of behavior. This may be puzzling at first, but the truth is that behavioral addictions are ultimately chemical in…
Internet gaming disorder is the name of a proposed mental health condition designed to give mental health professionals the ability to diagnose a dysfunctional, addictive pattern of playing video games, especially games played over the Internet. Tentatively, it belongs to a group of disorders known as behavioral addictions or process addictions. The American Psychiatric Association…
Addiction has long been limited to the abuse of chemical substances that leads to physical and emotional dependence. While still debated by some experts, many now agree that there are indisputable similarities between traditional substance addictions and what are called process addictions. These are addictions to any kind of activity or behavior, and do not…