Legal Niches

South Korea Claims Success in Game Addiction Treatment with Antidepressants

By james_fudge

South Korean psychiatrists claim that they have successfully treated game addiction with an antidepressant drug called Bupropion. The study was conducted by psychiatrist from the Department of Psychiatry at Chung Ang University - College of Medicine, used 11 participants that were "diagnosed" as having "Internet Game Addiction" because they played "StarCraft for 4 or more hours a day." Six of the eleven participants had skipped school for two months, while two of the participants had been divorced due to their addiction to StarCraft.

The entire group was treated with the antidepressant for six weeks. After the trial period, researchers say that their group's cravings to play StarCraft apparently decreased by 23.6 percent and total playing time decreased by 35.5 percent. Researchers also conducted MRI scans on all of the subjects and discovered that their brains responded "less strongly" to pictures of Zerglings after taking the drug. Read More

read more

Full post as published by GamePolitics.com on August 19, 2010 (boomark / email).