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Behavioral Addictions

          While popular culture has embraced Internet Addiction as a serious problem, the psychological community is undecided. The "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (DSM-IV), the standard for psychological diagnosis, does not recognize Internet addiction as a true disorder (Young, 1996). This unwillingness to recognize technological addictions as mental health disorders grows out of a larger debate over behavioral addictions in general.

     Traditionally, addiction involves the taking of drugs (Griffths, 2000). That is, addiction is physiological. While this view does not discount pyschological instigators for drug abuse, nor the physiological effects of compulsive behvaiors, it does argue that people can only be addicted to substences, not actions. Richard A. Davis sums up this position in the opening to his article "A Cognitive-Behavioral Model of Pathological Internet use (PIU)" (2001a):
 
         Addiction, as used in the literature, refers to a physiological dependence between a person and some stimulus, usually a substance. For this reason, the DSM-IV does not use addiction to describe pathological use or abuse of a substance or other stimulus... Instead, it favors the terms dependence (for substances) and pathological (for [behavioral] disorders).

     Defining addiction, then, is not so easy, and it gets even more complicated when dealing with behaviors. Psychologists who believe in such addictions argue that these compulsions share the same six core components as chemical dependence, and thus should be considered under the "addiction" rubric. These core components, first identified by Brown (1993) in relation to gambling addictions, are:
 
     
  1. Salience: The behavior impacts and guides thoughts, feelings, and actions beyond normal parameters.
  2. Mood Modification: The behavior provides positive and reinforcing feelings or emotions: a "buzz" or "high."
  3. Tolerance: The amount of time spent engaging in the behavior must increase over time in order to gain the same mood modifying effects.
  4. Withdrawal Symptoms: Negative feelings and physical states that occur when the behavior is discontinued.
  5. Conflict: Engaging in the behavior negatively impacts interpersonal relationships, significantly interrupts other daily activities, or creates internal conflict.
  6. Relapse: Failed attempts to control the behavior.
                                  (Adapted from Griffths, 2000)