There’s this scurrilous piece of psychiatric humor I get emailed to me, or psychiatric mailing lists in which I participate, with regularity, likening web use to a mental illness and “diagnosing” it in DSM-IV terms. May not be so scurrilous. Caught in the web: UF/Cincinnati study shows internet addicts suffer from mental illness. Twenty interviewees self-selected because their web use was problematic — with problems including marital strife or loss, work or school failure, going without sleep, shirking family responsibility, isolation, and consequent social and legal consequences — were found to have a variety of diagnosable psychiatric problems. “Every study participant’s Internet use met established diagnostic criteria for the family of psychiatric

illnesses known as impulse control disorders, which include kleptomania, a recurrent failure to resist impulses to shoplift, and

trichotillomania, the recurrent pulling out of one’s hair…” Most qualified as well for diagnosis with various other psychiatric disorders including manic depressive disorder, other psychotic disorders, anxiety disorders, substance abuse problems, other impulse control disorders and eating disorders. Participants described spending over 30 hrs./wk. online in such puruits as chatrooms and MUDs. (When you think about it, as internet use becomes more pervasive, people with psychiatric illnesses will of course be a segment of those online. Why would we anticipate that their web use would be any less difficult for them than other spheres of their life? Indeed, the convenience and anonymity of use make it so attractive that pathological web use may become disproportionate.)