South Korean psychiatrists treating StarCraft 'addiction' with drugs

Off Topic:
I flew into Chicago today from Ireland and the first thing I happen to see is the Starcraft Airplane, I started laughing my head off and the guy beside me wasn't too happy. I never thought I'd get to see it. I look forward to seeing many more oddities that I have seen on the internet

Like stimpaks will stop them from playing.

That is depressing. (pun xD)
My dad and my brother are both addicted to a online game too, Cabal Online, and I find it sad that these guys who play StarCraft need to be treated with antidepressants.. :(

Well, at least it is a sign that the game is REALLY good. xD

"MRI scans showed that participant's brains reacted less strongly to pictures of Zerglings after the treatment."

Zerglophiles? I thought they were only a myth.

Hearing "antidepressants" makes me want to listen to Serj Tankian's "Unthinking Majority" for some reason...

Anyway, who knows... Perhaps it actually does work against Starcraft-addiction. If it would work against WoW-addiction then it sure could get some heavy use over here in Germany... and probably in other parts of the world, too.

I need some of that stuff to get me off of Geometry Wars, my high score of 883 million in Pacifism is not enough...must continue to climb the leaderboards...

"MRI scans showed that participant's brains reacted less strongly to pictures of Zerglings after the treatment."

People get addicted to behaviors, so I suppose that it was we'd treat this like we do other addictions.


For some reason, though, being that addicted to a video game makes me depressed...pass the buproprion will you?

Soo.... replacing one drug with another? Sure, that makes TOTAL sense.

You know what might help these people get over their StarCraft addiction?

StarCraft 2.

Why the quotation marks around "addiction"? Addiction should always be taken seriously whether the object of addiction is drugs, gambling, sex, video games or anything else. StarCraft and World of Warcraft have probably destroyed more lives in South Korea than heroin.

I'm about to start a placement in Psychiatry for 6 weeks. This would be a brilliant paper to present if I was asked to present a paper at any stage.

@PolishMountainMan
they would just play more sc

Well. This article proves South Koreans play way too much video games.

if a doctor tried this in the U.S., they would get suspended

I was pretty depressed about 5 years ago. I stopped going to college for a year or two and pretty much played games the whole time. I forget when, but eventually I was prescribed Prozac and I eventually ended up going back to school, graduating, and getting a decent job. I still play a ton of games though.

Anyway, I'm convinced psychiatrists are too quick to prescribe meds to people. It's like their quick fix solution for everything.

Oh lord..

"Im addicted to my PS3" "Get this kid some medication!"

They will do anything to give people medication :/

Those people have to be wired differently.

Maybe it's just the culture they grow up in.

I'm honestly not very surprised

So these patients basically need more vespene gas.

"Isn't it possible these people are suffering from depression because of their obsession with a video game? Or, rather, couldn't they have become obsessed with a video game because they were depressed? In either case, doesn't it kind of make sense to treat them with antidepressants?"

The thing is, buproprion doesn't purely treat depression. One of the things buproprion does is inhibit reuptake of dopamine, and it's long been suspected that the dopamine reward pathway, which is believed by many to be how we experience pleasure, is tied to addiction. It's plausible to think that treating the depression could have an affect on the addiction, but I'd wager that the buproprion is treating the addiction itself. Quite literally, it's likely interfering with the player's ability to feel pleasure when playing Starcraft.

they should just sue the game company instead:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/08/lineage11-addiction/

Little hostile Joystiq? . Buproprion (AKA welbutrin) is a drug that--in addition to treatment of depression--is used to help quit smoking. And other addictions.

This is probably the most amusing story I've seen today.
Yeah, I have a dark sense of humor.

I don't think Senor McElroy enunciated his point well (sorry, most of the time the big Mac is a veritable wordsmith, but this was . . . a little weak). He wasn't downplaying the need for these people to be treated. They needed help.

Instead, the point is this: many "legitimate" mental illnesses (in other words, illnesses that are actually described in the DSM IV) cause obsessive or addictive behaviors, such as being overactive sexually, spending too much money, or drug abuse.

So you can't say "I gave this video game addict welbutrin, and he broke his addiction, ergo, welbutrin treats video game addictions." The medication could be treating the addiction itself, or the medication could be treating an underlying mental illness that was undiagnosed and that was causing the addiction.

The fact is, there are many "addictions" that are not officially recognized by the psychiatric community at large that some "doctors" (I use the term loosely) will still "treat," such as television addiction, food addiction and video game addiction. None of these activities are physiologically addictive; if someone is "hooked" on one of these, it means there is some underlying disorder causing it. Someone who has a "food addiction," for example, could be experiencing depression, since increased appetite is a symptom of the illness.

If you know someone who is spends too much time on sex, video games, tv, gambling, or whatever, urge them to get help from a LEGIT shrink who will look past the problem behavior and treat the underlying illness. Mental illness is a serious thing and wanna-be doctors like Dr. Phil need to stop monkeying around making crap up when there are real diagnoses and treatments to be had.

@Shadsy

Mental illness is a very real thing. I have bipolar type 2 disorder. I am now being treated (very successfully I might add), and I can tell you that when I look back at times when I was manic or depressed, it was practically impossible to control my behaviors. I simply did what my brain chemistry dictated.

Human beings are flesh and blood, and that includes our minds. If your brain chemistry is off, then that will have a material impact on the decisions you make and the things you do.

I'm not saying people who are hooked on drugs or alcohol necessarily have a "disease" beyond their control; what I am saying is that behavior isn't always a matter of choice and self-control.

"Isn't it possible these people are suffering from depression because of their obsession with a video game? Or, rather, couldn't they have become obsessed with a video game because they were depressed? In either case, doesn't it kind of make sense to treat them with antidepressants?"

Stick to gaming and stop pretending to know anything about fields outside your own.

@Shadsy

Oh, no offense taken.

Personally, I take umbrage with groups like AA that tell their members that they are "powerless" to quit the undesired behavior on their own. Unless there is an actual mental illness at play, I don't believe that. You /can/ quit smoking, drinking, or doing drugs through willpower and self-discipline (unless you are so addicted that they will literally die without the drug--in those instances, medical assistance is obviously required). In fact, most drug rehab programs have a god-awful recidivism rate because just taking drugs away from someone for a month doesn't teach him or her the self-discipline to avoid drugs in the future.

People need to take some damn responsibility for their own actions, and stop pretending that "the devil made me do it" is an acceptable excuse.

But if someone is excessively manic due to brain chemical issues, and that manifests itself via twenty-hour a day starcraft marathons, then that person needs the underlying medical condition to be treated before he can deal with the symptom.

That be all I'm sayin. :)

I just loved joystick clearing it up about "Also -- we swear we're not making this up -- MRI scans showed that participant's brains reacted less strongly to pictures of Zerglings after the treatment." it's an argument they couldn't believe as we do.

also, it's well known that there's an addiction to online games problem in Korea, how many times have we heard about WoW, korea and "died" in the news?

Why do people treat depression with drugs? Jesus!