PsychologistLouise Nadeau heads a new institute for the study of dependencies at theUniversity of Montreal in Canada. She says addiction is marked by twophenomena.
Thefirst is that a person has a behavior he or she can't control. "You wouldwant to drink less, but you drink much more than you want," Nadeausuggests. "You would like to gamble less? in spite of the fact that itdoesn't necessarily give you the pleasure it should, or you feel bad aboutthat."
Theother key is that the behavior causes a series of problems in many spheres ofyour life. "You're having problems with your work, you're having problemswith your social network, you're having problems also with your mentalhealth," Nadeau explains.
Tostudy Internet addiction, Nadeau asked mental health clinics in her province ofQuebec to report on cases of Internet addiction they had seen. She says thatover a several year period, some dramatic cases emerged.
"Whatwe're dealing with here are people who stop eating, who don't sleep, who workuntil the early hours of the day, have a complete unbalanced schedule and thatgoes on, and on, and on for months," Nadeau reports. Many of the peoplesuffering from Internet addiction had other problems ? either psychological, orwith their families.
Nadeausays this new addiction is difficult to treat. She recounts how psychologistsworked with a young man who spent two years in his room playing games on hiscomputer. "When he emerged to go to the treatment center he literally hadbeen out of the world for two years," she says. "So in fact, it wasslowly working on a process of A, reintroducing him to real life, and B, tryingto find alternative activities to being on the screen."
Shetells the story of another man who was finally induced to go on vacation afterbeing treated for several months. But when he got to the airport, he got onlinein the airport's Internet café. He spent the next two weeks at the airport andnever went on his vacation.
Nadeausays there's no standard of treatment for Internet addiction. But over the nextfew years, she will be gathering information and ideas from therapists allaround Quebec. She says her goal is to create treatment guidelines and examplesof best practices that other psychologists can follow to treat people with thisproblem.