CHICAGO (AP):The telltale signs are ominous: teens holing up in their rooms, ignoring friends, family, even food and a shower, while grades plummet and belligerence soars.
The culprit is not alcohol or drugs. It is videogames which, for certain kids, can be as powerfully addictive as heroin, some doctors contend.
A leading council of the nation's largest doctors' group wants to have this behaviour officially classified as a psychiatric disorder, to raise awareness and enable sufferers to get insurance coverage for treatment.
In a report prepared for the American Medical Association's annual policy meeting starting today in Chicago, the council asks the group to lobby for the disorder to be included in a widely used mental illness manual created and published by the American Psychiatric Association.
AMA delegates could vote on the proposal as early as Monday, and it will likely draw heated debate. Video game makers scoff at the notion that their products can cause a psychiatric disorder. Even some mental health experts say labelling the habit a formal addiction is going too far.
Dr. James Scully, the psychiatric association's medical director, said the group will seriously consider the AMA report in the long process of revising the diagnostic manual. The current manual was published in 1994; the next edition is to be completed in 2012.
Five million kids addicted
Up to 90 per cent of American youngsters play video games and as many as 15 per cent of them - more than five million kids - may be addicted, according to data cited in the AMA council's report.
Joyce Protopapas of Frisco, Texas, said her 17-year-old son, Michael, was a video addict. Over nearly two years, video and Internet games transformed him from an outgoing, academically gifted teen into a reclusive manipulator who flunked two 10th-grade classes and spent several hours day and night playing a popular online video game called World of Warcraft.
"My father was an alcoholic ... and I saw exactly the same thing (in Michael)," Protopapas said. "We battled (with) him until October of last year," she said. "We went to therapists, we tried taking the game away.
"He would threaten us physically. He would curse and call us every name imaginable," she said."It was as if he was possessed."
When she suggested to therapists that Michael had a video game addiction, "nobody was familiar with it," she said. "They all pooh-poohed it."
Therapeutic school
Last fall, the family found a therapist who "told us he was addicted. Period". They sent Michael to a therapeutic boarding school where he has spent the last six months - at a cost of US$5,000 monthly that insurance will not cover, his mother said.
A support group called On-Line Gamers Anonymous has numerous postings on its website from gamers seeking help. Liz Woolley, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, created the site after her 21-year-old son fatally shot himself in 2001 while playing an online game she says destroyed his life.
In a February posting, a 13-year-old identified only as Ian told of playing video games for nearly 12 hours straight, said he felt suicidal and wondered if he was addicted.
"I think I need help," the boy said.
Postings also come from adults, mostly men, who say video game addiction cost them jobs, family lives and self-esteem.
According to the report prepared by the AMA's Council on Science and Public Health, based on a review of scientific literature, "dependence-like behaviours are more likely in children who start playing video games at younger ages".
Overuse most often occurs with online role-playing games involving multiple players, the report says. Blizzard Entertainment's teen-rated, monster-killing World of Warcraft is among the most popular. A company spokesman declined to comment on whether the games can cause addiction.
Dr. Martin Wasserman, a paediatrician who heads the Maryland State Medical Society, said the AMA proposal will help raise awareness and called it "the right thing to do".
