Many treatment units have their own tools used for the assessment of patients or clients, that will be based on proven models of assessment and adapted to their particular specifications. They will usually include some degree of each of the following aspects: - behavioural patterns, psychological issues, biological influence and social concerns.
Considerations of issues to be assessed may include frequency, amount, duration, patterns, matters of control, impact on life and potential consequences; these can be applied to any addiction.
The assessor will use the results to discover whether the addiction is due to a physical dependence or whether the individual has a psychological addiction. It is important to discover this in order to establish the correct plan of care.
Physical addictions are usually found in those hooked on tobacco, alcohol and most substances in general, whereas psychological dependence is found in those suffering with addictions such as gambling, internet and sex.
Techniques Used
Assessment can be achieved by using any or all of the following methods:- question and answer (either written or verbal) using a mixture of closed and open ended questions, observations, testimonies from others and using a scoring system against set out criteria.
One of the most commonly used tool for assessing addicts (especially those with a habit for drugs and alcohol) is the European Addiction Severity Index. This instrument will provide a score for the person; a high score indicates a greater need for treatment. To find this score information such as history, frequency, consequences, medical issues, legal matters, employment, social factors, family and psychological profile is used, and results are interpreted and used to plan an effective and appropriate plan of care tailored to the individuals needs.
All units will have developed a tool that they use for assessing the level of a person’s addiction. The results of these assessments may tally with or vary greatly from the individual’s perception of their problem.
- the problem is that it can be an addictive world. At it's simplest level spending too much time in front of the monitor, and insufficient time on a relationship, can undermine the closeness, build barriers, and lead into problems that are increasingly difficult to deal with.
At it's worst, the net can be a source of erotic fantasy, pornography, illicit relationships, cyber-affairs, and ultimately the destruction of a normal healthy marriage
recent survey of more than 1100 personnel administrators concluded that drug and alcohol abuse are more likely to cost a person their job than incompetence. Drug abuse has affected every area of society; the music business is no exception.
Some believe that drug addiction is more pervasive in show business, while others counter that this perception exists only because of the high-profile nature of the industry. The fact that drug addiction crops up everywhere suggests that it is an illness particular to human nature, not a specific industry.
There is little solace in this however, when a musician you know becomes difficult to get along with, unreliable or untrustworthy, incapable of performing, or even violent due to their worsening drug or alcohol problem. It would be wonderful if we lived in a world free of drugs and drug addiction, but until that day arrives musicians may find themselves inadvertently working with others who have become victims of this very serious illness. What follows is some helpful perspective and advice for those who are struggling with this situation, or those who simply wish to know more about it.
There are a myriad of attitudes concerning drug addiction, and drug addicts. (From here on we will refer to persons addicted to drugs and/or alcohol as one group: drug addicts.) Unfortunately, there are still those who believe this condition to be the result of poor judgement, or perhaps a flawed character. The consensus among modern health care professionals, including the American Medical Association (AMA), is that drug addiction is a disease. Theories concerning its origins embody the classic "nature vs. nurture" arguments: Does one become an addict because of genetics, environment and upbringing, or a combination thereof? It may be safely concluded that the origins of drug addiction are many, and complex.
Every so often a drug comes along that is touted by doctors and, more loudly, by its manufacturers as the 'next big thing'. Such drugs invariably receive coverage in the general media to a far greater extent than is usually afforded to a new drug, news of which is usually restricted to specialist publications.
In June, 2006, the drug rimonabant1 was approved for doctors in the UK to prescribe, with other countries in the European Union expected to follow suit. This news made British newspapers such as The Times. Even before the drug was approved, stories were starting to appear in places such as The Guardian newspaper and the BBC news website. Coverage of this sort is usually reserved for the latest cancer drug but, in the early 21st Century, obesity is such an enormous health issue that a drug which can stop people from over-eating and help them to shed weight is newsworthy indeed. This is precisely what the makers and supporters of rimonabant claim it is able to do.
The paint stripper drug that kill
An industrial solvent used to clean graffiti has become the potentially lethal drug of choice for some on the gay clubbing scene.
Another Saturday night, another ambulance outside a night club. But this is not the aftermath of a drunken brawl in binge-drinking Britain.
The medics are there to attend to someone overdosed on an industrial cleaner - GBL - and it's a scene which has been repeated a dozen times in one night.
Gamma butyrolactone, to give it its full name, has a similar effect to GHB, the "date-rape" drug made illegal in 2003 and which is equally popular in some gay clubs. They produce a euphoric high or, if too much is taken, nausea and unconsciousness.
In 2004 James Pacenza sued IBM for $US5 million after he was fired by IBM for visiting an adult chat room during the workday. Pacenza claimed that he is an internet addict who deserves treatment rather than dismissal. He had supposedly visited the chat rooms as "self medication" for traumatic stress incurred on military service in 1969. That stress caused him to become "a sex addict, and with the development of the internet, an internet addict". Pacenza claimed protection under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA),
Studies have shown that from 25 to 50 percent of cyber-addiction is occurring at the workplace ... That means employees are getting paid to participate in activities that are not work-related.
I don't think Internet addiction disorder exists any more than tennis addictive disorder, bingo addictive disorder, and TV addictive disorder exist. People can overdo anything. To call it a disorder is an error
published studies on Internet addiction are scarce. Most are surveys, marred by self-selecting samples and no control groups. The rest are theoretical papers that speculate on the philosophical aspects of Internet addiction but provide no data.
Meanwhile, many psychologists even doubt that addiction is the right term to describe what happens to people when they spend too much time online.
"It seems misleading to characterize behaviors as 'addictions' on the basis that people say they do too much of them," says Sara Kiesler, PhD, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University and co-author of one of the only controlled studies on Internet usage, published in the September 1998 American Psychologist. "No research has yet established that there is a disorder of Internet addiction that is separable from problems such as loneliness or problem gambling, or that a passion for using the Internet is long-lasting."
When people spend dozens of hours weekly at their computers, or on the internet, or playing video games, it is almost certain that some other activities will suffer. The question is, when does this behaviour warrant the label 'addiction'? Addiction is a strong word, calling for both renunciation on the part of the subject and forceful intervention by others ... a behaviour becomes problematic when, and only when, it degrades other important things in life. A 60-hour-a-week compulsive EverQuest user who fails to speak to his own children when they come home from school is engaging in problematic behaviour. But consider the same user, living alone, with all his friends being online and in the game - is his devotion of time to cyberspace problematic? In the end we can only judge whether presence in the virtual world is good or bad by reference to the ordinary daily life of the person making the choice to go there. For some people Earth is where they really ought to spend their time. For others, perhaps the fantasy world is the only decent place available.
1. Tolerance - the need for increasing amounts of time on the net to achieve satisfaction and/or significantly diminished effect with continued use of the same amount of time on the internet.
2. Two or more withdrawal symptoms developing within days to one month after reduction of Internet use or cessation of Internet use (i.e., quitting cold turkey) and these must cause distress or impair social, personal or occupational functioning. These include: psychomotor agitation, i.e. trembling, tremors; anxiety; obsessive thinking about what is happening on the Internet; fantasies or dreams about the Internet; voluntary or involuntary typing movements of the fingers.
3. Use of the Internet is engaged in to relieve or avoid withdrawal symptoms.
4. The Internet is often accessed more often, or for longer periods of time than was intended.
5. A significant amount of time is spent in activities related to Internet use (e.g. Internet books, trying out new World Wide Web browsers, researching Internet vendors, etc).
6. Important social, occupational, or recreational activities are given up or reduced because of use.
7. The individual risks the loss of a significant relationship, job, educational or career opportunity because of excessive use.
6 percent to 10 percent of the approximately 189 million Internet users in this country have a dependency that can be as destructive as alcoholism and drug addiction
two students in Chongqing fell asleep on a railway track after an all-night internet session, and a 31-year old Legend of Mir addict reportedly dropped dead after a 20-hour session.
the parents of a 13-year-old Chinese boy who they say jumped to his death from a tall building after playing one of the popular Warcraft online games for 36 hours straight
Hong Kong Internet junkie fights to combat addiction
Anthony Chan betrays the tell-tale signs of his addiction: his skin is pallid and covered in spots, he sits nervously hunched, peering to correct his blighted vision and he has trouble communicating with friends and family.
At just 16 he is emotionally fragile, physically ill and his future has been compromised by the addiction which has him in its grip. But when the lights are switched off he gets online, he could not care less about the problems it brings. His drug is the Internet and, when connected, it makes the lonely Hong Kong schoolboy feel on top of the world.
"The computer is my friend, it's my life, my social life," says Chan, shifting in his chair and squinting in the glare of the brightly-lit office where we talk. It is one of the few times this week he has left the confines of his bedroom where he spends hours and hours every day logged onto the Internet and he is missing it already, he says.
Notions of technological addictions (Griffiths, 1996) and computer addiction (Shotton, 1991) have previously been studied in England. However, when the concept of Internet addiction was first introduced in a pioneer study by Young (1996), it sparked a controversial debate by both clinicians and academicians. Part of this controversy revolved around the contention that only physical substances ingested into the body could be termed "addictive." While many believed the term addiction should be applied only to cases involving the ingestion of a drug (e.g., Rachlin, 1990; Walker, 1989), defining addiction has moved beyond this to include a number of behaviors which do not involve an intoxicant such as compulsive gambling (Griffiths, 1990), video game playing (Keepers, 1990), overeating (Lesuire & Bloome, 1993), exercise (Morgan, 1979), love relationships (Peele & Brody, 1975), and television-viewing (Winn, 1983). Therefore, linking the term "addiction" solely to drugs creates an artificial distinction that strips the usage of the term for a similar condition when drugs are not involved (Alexander & Scheweighofer, 1988).
China on Tuesday introduced an “anti-online game addiction system” intended to protect players from the mental and physical perils of spending too much time in front of computers.
The system, which will encourage players to play less by cutting the benefits they gain in online games, is to be implemented by local internet companies that have signed a code of conduct drawn up by China's press and publications administration.
The move reflects fears about the social impact of popular “multiplayer online role-playing games” which have been blamed for encouraging sloth, truancy and even murder.
An estimated 25m Chinese play online role-playing games. These allow players to interact as characters ranging from warrior heroes to powerful magicians in vast virtual environments.
However, communist groups and newspapers have highlighted reports that many players are addicted to the games.
Aboujaoude, clinical assistant professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences and director of Stanford's Impulse Control Disorders Clinic, said that a small but growing number of Internet users are starting to visit their doctors for help with unhealthy attachments to cyberspace. He said these patients' strong drive to compulsively use the Internet to check e-mail, make blog entries or visit Web sites or chat rooms, is not unlike what sufferers of substance abuse or impulse-control disorders experience: a repetitive, intrusive and irresistible urge to perform an act that may be pleasurable in the moment but that can lead to significant problems on the personal and professional levels.
Signs of online gaming addiction include a preoccupation with gaming, loss of interest in other activities, academic problems for students, social withdrawal from family and friends, using gaming as an escape, and continuing to game despite its consequences. We have seen a dramatic increase in the number of calls from parents concerned about a child’s online gaming habits in the last year. Gaming has become a particular problem in Korea and China where new clinics addressing the problem have opened and a new Detox Center for Video Game Addiction opened in Amsterdam this past summer for intensive inpatient treatment.
new data are being released by the National Annenberg Risk Survey of Youth, which has tracked gambling among young people ages 14 to 22 since 2002. Based on the survey's most recent estimates, approximately 850,000 males ages 18 to 22 gamble online at least one a month. The corresponding number for males between 14 and 17 is 357,000.
Among the 18- to 22-year-old age group, weekly use of Internet gambling sites increased from 2.3% in 2005 to 5.8% this year, a statistically significant increase.
With a rise in online gambling comes a greater danger of addiction, according to Nancy Petry, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut’s Center for Gambling Research and Treatment.
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