The New Addictions

The DSM-V(the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of  Mental Disorders)   is the new edition of this world famous manual. And is interesting how there, appears a lot of new disorders. We can see two ways to approach in this situation, and both are not opposite: 1) Society is sicker than some years ago; 2)There is a progressive work to classified and convert in "pathology" spaces, activities, interests, that before weren't. 

And in this second option, we could, also, think another two reason for this: 1) We discover new "illness" or 2) We "create" new psychopathologies. And a good example for this last option is a Chinese study where scientists work in a comparison between substance addiction people's brain and obsessive internet user's brain. And they found that there is a similar change in the brain for people addicted to substances like alcohol, cocaine or cannabis and in people with "internet addiction". The scientist used MRI scanners with a control group of sixteen normal subjects and an experimental group of seventeen Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) subjects.

However, it's interesting in this case, read behind these studies, because, we live into a particular economy model, and "illness" and pharmacology are two big industries. I mean, if this system ask for join to the new technologies, and all the social life, appears into a virtual social platform, is weird that now they star to believe that it could produce and addiction. And beside, they are thinking (APA), to include soon, sex and internet to the addiction disorders. And, ¿What is the solution?, ¿Pills?. I can't trust in an organization who is trying progressively all the social space in psychopatologies (For example the ideological behaviour against system). We should stay alert when these new categories appears.

Rescue from http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/reality-check-with-polly-curtis/2012/jan/12/internet-health?INTCMP=SRCH