Prevalence and Factors of Addictive Internet Use Among Adolescents in Wuhan, China: Interactions of Parental Relationship With Age and Hyperactivity-Impulsivity.
Prevalence and Factors of Addictive Internet Use among Adolescents in Wuhan, China: Interactions of Parental Relationship with Age and Hyperactivity-Impulsivity.
PLoS One. 2013; 8(4): e61782
Wu X, Chen X, Han J, Meng H, Luo J, Nydegger L, Wu H
This study examined the prevalence of addictive Internet use and analyzed the role of parental relationship in affecting this behavior among a random sample of adolescents in Wuhan, China.Students (n?=?1,101) were randomly selected from four schools, including 638 boys and 463 girls with a mean age of 13.8 (standard deviation?=?1.2) years. Addictive Internet use, parental relationship, hyperactivity-impulsivity were measured by validated instruments. Prevalence rate, ANOVA and multiple linear regression method were used to analyze the level of Internet addiction and its association with parental relationship, hyperactivity-impulsivity, as well as the interaction of parental relationship with chronological age and hyperactivity-impulsivity.The prevalence rate of Internet addiction was 13.5% (16.5% for boys and 9.5% for girls, p<0.01). Compared to non-addictive users, addictive Internet users were scored significantly lower on parental relationships and significantly higher on hyperactivity-impulsivity. Interaction analysis indicated that better parental relationship was associated with more reductions in risk of addictive Internet use for younger students than for older students, and with more risk of Internet addiction among higher than among lower hyperactivity-impulsivity students.Findings of this study indicate that adolescent addictive Internet use is a significant public health threat in China. Prevention interventions targeting parental relationship must consider adolescent's age and hyperactivity-impulsivity tendency. HubMed – addiction
Addiction is Not a Brain Disease (and it Matters).
Front Psychiatry. 2013; 4: 24
Levy N
The claim that addiction is a brain disease is almost universally accepted among scientists who work on addiction. The claim’s attraction rests on two grounds: the fact that addiction seems to be characterized by dysfunction in specific neural pathways and the fact that the claim seems to the compassionate response to people who are suffering. I argue that neural dysfunction is not sufficient for disease: something is a brain disease only when neural dysfunction is sufficient for impairment. I claim that the neural dysfunction that is characteristic of addiction is not sufficient for impairment, because people who suffer from that dysfunction are impaired, sufficiently to count as diseased, only given certain features of their context. Hence addiction is not a brain disease (though it is often a disease, and it may always involve brain dysfunction). I argue that accepting that addiction is not a brain disease does not entail a moralizing attitude toward people who suffer as a result of addiction; if anything, it allows for a more compassionate, and more effective, response to addiction. HubMed – addiction
[Compulsory admissions for addiction: resonance from Flanders.]
Tijdschr Psychiatr. 2013; 55(4): 278-280
Dom G