Stanford medical study showing that Internet related "Impulse Control Disorders" (or Internet "Addiction") are exhibited in a significant portion of the population.
A press release, from the Stanford University School of Medicine, announced a published study which is helping answer the question, "Is spending too much time online a prevalent and damaging condition, or simply a bad habit among a select few?" According to the release, the study's researchers have taken an important step toward resolving the debate over whether compulsive use of the Internet merits a medical diagnosis.
In a first-of-its-kind, telephone-based study of 2,513 adults, the researchers found that more than one out of eight Americans exhibited at least one possible sign of problematic Internet use. The findings follow results from previous, less rigorous studies that found a significant number of the population could be suffering from some form of Internet addiction.
“Our telephone survey suggests that potential markers of problematic Internet use are present in a sizeable portion of the population,” the researchers noted in their paper, which appears in the October issue of CNS Spectrums: The International Journal of Neuropsychiatric Medicine. Lead author Elias Aboujaoude became interested in the problem from seeing a growing number of habitual Internet users visiting the university's Impulse Control Disorders Clinic, part of the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders program within it's Psychiatric Department.
The study found that Internet "addiction" is manifested through involvement in different forms of internet access, including special-interest web sites. Aboujaoude said he found most concerning the numbers of people who hid their nonessential Internet use or used the Internet as an escape, "In a sense, they’re using the Internet to ‘self-medicate’.”
Full Internet Study press release
NOTE: OCD and related disorders are a serious issue for many people and requires proper understanding, diagnosis and treatment plans. The OCD program at Standford School of Medicine has a links page, targeted primarily to clinicians, that they believe "to be useful and, in the main, trustworthy. The sites for patients are organized by mental disorder and categories."
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