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23 - Gaming Disorder and Its Treatment

from Part IV - Prevention and Treatment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2020

By
Mark D. Griffiths ,
Daria J. Kuss  and
Halley M. Pontes
Edited by
Steve Sussman
Steve Sussman
Affiliation:
University of Southern California
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Summary

This chapter provides a brief overview of gaming disorder (GD) and its treatment. There are now over twenty different screens for assessing problematic gaming although relatively few have used nationally representative samples. The prevalence rates in these nationally representative studies have ranged from 1.2 percent to 8.5 percent depending upon country and screening instrument used. There have been a number of studies describing treatment of GD, although many of these tend not to distinguish between Internet Use Disorder and GD. In terms of treatment for GD, both psychological and pharmacological approaches have been adopted. More specifically, psychological treatment using a cognitive-behavioral framework (CBT) appears to be the most widely used. Furthermore, pharmacological treatment using opioid receptor antagonists, antidepressants, antipsychotics, opioid receptor antagonists, and psychostimulants has been reported in the literature. It is concluded that standardized and comprehensive methods of diagnosis are at present lacking, and that further research into GD is needed from clinical, epidemiological, cross-cultural, and neurobiological perspectives of GD.

Keywords

internet gaming versus internet addictionetiologyscreeningcognitive-behavior therapyMotivation Enhancement Therapypharmacologic
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Substance and Behavioral Addictions , pp. 288 - 294
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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