We love fall here at Psych Central, as all of the leaves turn pretty colors here in New England. It’s a beautiful time of the year, and a beautiful time to be alive. We hope you enjoy today’s Flashback.
10 Years Ago on Psych Central
- How Much is Too Much When Spending Time Online?
Ten years ago I wrote this editorial about the silliness of ‘Internet Addiction Disorder’ as a stand-alone diagnosis. Ten years later and, while we have more research into this phenomenon, it still stands as a ridiculous attempt to label people dysfunctional based upon arbitrary, borrowed criteria. I suspect it’s just a matter of time before a medication is approved to treat this issue. Television, Talking-to-Friends and Book Addiction disorders won’t be far behind.
5 Years Ago on Psych Central
- October 2002 Blog Entry
Scroll all the way down the horribly formatted page and you’ll see an entry about how a study at the time found that women’s mental health benefits just as much as men’s in marriage. (It’s one of the few entries that doesn’t link to a dead article — a frustrating aside: why do so many websites have to change their links and not put in simple redirects to the new location of the article?) This was interesting to me since we’ve recently blogged about related issues, such as the effect of relationships related to risk of heart attacks, relationship arguing style and marital satisfaction.
1 Year Ago on Psych Central
- Abolishing Schizophrenia: In My Opinion
Contributor Jennifer Bechdel shares a controversial viewpoint about doing away with the diagnosis of schizophrenia, but not really… Simply changing its name, to try and reduce the stigma associated with it. It’s worth another look if you missed it. - Our Dying Cat
One year ago, we had to say good-bye to one of our cats who was dying of chronic renal failure. We prolonged her life for 2 years, but one year later, we still very much miss her. Someday I’ll post a picture of our family of cats.
(2 votes, average: 3.5 out of 5)
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2 Comments to
“Friday Flashback for October 12, 2007”
There is some controversy over how to classify delusions. Should delusions be classified according to theme (e.g., persecutory, somatic, grandiose etc) or should delusions be classified according to etiology (e.g., substance induced, cerebral trauma induced) or should delusions be classified according to content (e.g., replacement of person who is close with an impostor (Capgras), familiar people disguising as strangers and following me around (Fregoli), ‘I am dead’ (Cotard)?
(There is clearly some overlap and some recurring problems. E.g., ‘My wife has been replaced by a robot’ Might be considered the same as ‘My step-son has been replaced by an alien’ because the theme of a close person being replaced - or it might be different because it is about a spouse compared to a child, or a robot compared to an alien).
The issue is: How finegrained should classification go?
Similarly with phobias. We might consider that there is this over-arching type or kind of disorder (specific phobia) with many different sub-types on the basis of theme (e.g., blood or injury etc). Or we might consider that the different types are more fine-grained than that (e.g., fear of flying, fear of spiders, fear of snakes etc).
Should the DSM classify on the basis of over-arching type (phobia) or thematic types that are mid-level (e.g., blood / injury phobia) or particular types that are low level / fine grained (e.g., spiders, airplanes, heights)?
Now lets have a think about whether internet addiction should be regarded as a disorder in its own right.
Is internet addiction to addiction what a phobia of spiders is to addiction?
If so… Then whats the problem again?????
Some grounds we might have for distinguishing internet addiction from other kinds of addiction (e.g., TV addiction or gambelling addiction or crack addiction) might be if there are distinct etiological features, risk factors, demographic features, treatments, course etc than there are for other kinds of addiction. Surely the people who are likely to have a problem with using the internet to the extent that it is causing them impairment in functioning in the social / occupational / psychological sense are likely to be different from the people who are likely to have a problem with using crack to such an extent. If so.. Then it might be worthwhile considering it to be a distinct disorder in its own right.
I guess… I just have difficulty with seeing how ‘internet addiction’ is different from ‘Capgras delusion’ is different from ‘phobia of flying’.
?
I’m sorry - that wasn’t very clear:
High-Level (General) type
1) Addiction
2) Phobia
3) Delusion
Mid-Level (Thematic?) type
1) (Not sure what to put here) Substance?
2) Blood-Injury etc (I think there are 4 in the DSM)
3) Grandiose, Paranoid etc
Low-Level type
1) amphetamine, opiates, gambelling, TV, internet
2) flying, spiders, heights, blood
3) Capgras, Fregoli, Cotard, Mirrored-Self MisIdentification
I guess I don’t see how this is analogous… So if you don’t mind the lists of phobias or delusions… I don’t see why you should mind the lists of addictions…
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Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 12 Oct 2007
