At its annual meeting in Chicago, the American Medical Association rejected a proposal to formalize video game addiction as a mental disorder in the American Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV) used by the American Psychiatric Association. The move has been generally welcomed by the gaming industry and community, although few would deny that a handful of players do become obsessively involved in video games and may benefit from intervention or professional help to bring better balance to their lives. However, Dr. Stuart Gitlow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine noted, “There is nothing here to suggest that this is a complex physiological disease state akin to alcoholism or other substance abuse disorders, and it doesn’t get to have the word addiction attached to it.”
