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U.S. medical group holds back diagnosis on video-game addiction |
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15:28, June 29, 2007 |
The powerful video-game industry won a victory this week as it managed to persuade the American Medical Association (AMA) not to make a professional diagnosis on behaviors related to excessive game playing.
Video-game buffs would not be officially addicted anytime soon after the group of medical professionals scale back Wednesday a controversial proposal seeking to declare excessive video-game playing a mental disorder like pathological gambling.
Saying the issue needed more study, the association also decided against urging parents to limit to two hours a day the amount of time their kids play video games, watch television and surf the Internet.
However, AMA said it remains concerned about the behavioral, health and societal effects of video-game and Internet overuse, and recommends parent to closely monitor their children's use of video games and the Internet, according to a statement from AMA's annual meeting in Chicago.
The 250,000-member physician organization made headlines last week by pressing forward on a proposal to "strongly encourage" that video-game addiction be diagnosed a formal disorder. It wouldhave asked the American psychiatrists to consider including "video-game addiction as a formal diagnostic disorder" in their handbook.
But the organization Wednesday removed the word "addiction" anddecided to simply forward its report expressing concerns about "video-game overuse" to the American Psychiatric Association, whichis revising its mental-health manual.
The 30-billion-dollar game industry were pleased with AMA's toned-down language.
Michael Gallagher, president of the industry's trade group, theEntertainment Software Association, said his group supports mental-health experts and others within AMA who agree that it would be premature to conclude that video-game addiction is a mental disorder.
However, industry executives were less happy with another recommendation in AMA's Wednesday report. The association plans tolobby the Federal Trade Commission to improve the current voluntary video-game rating system, which is now run by the industry-funded Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB).
"We would like to see a ratings system that better alerts parents to the content of the video game and recommended age of the player, so they can decide whether or not their child should be playing it," said AMA president Ronald Davis in the statement.
The ratings board defended its system, which assigns ratings based on the level of violence or sexual contents in video games.
The medical group's proposal to review the ratings system "seems to disregard the fact that the vast majority of parents are satisfied with the ESRB ratings and use them regularly to choose games for their children," said the board's president Patricia Vance in a statement.
Source: Xinhua
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