Treatments of internet gaming disorder: a systematic review of the evidence

Abstract

Introduction:The American Psychiatric Association included Internet gaming disorder (IGD) in the 5 th Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and the World Health Organization included gaming disorder in the 11 th revision of the International Classification of Diseases. These recent updates suggest significant concern related to the harms of excessive gaming. Areas Covered:This systematic review provides an updated summary of the scientific literature on treatments for IGD. Inclusion criteria were that studies: 1) evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention for IGD or excessive gaming; 2) use an experimental design (i.e., multi-armed [randomized or non-randomized] or pretest-posttest); 3) include at least 10 participants per group; and 4) include an outcome measure of IGD symptoms or gaming duration. The review identified 22 studies evaluating treatments for IGD: 8 evaluating medication, 7 evaluating cognitive behavioral psychotherapy, and 7 evaluating other interventions and psychosocial treatments.Expert Opinion: Even with the recent uptick in publication of such clinical trials, methodological flaws prevent strong conclusions about the efficacy of any treatment for IGD. Additional well-designed clinical trials using common metrics for assessing IGD symptoms are needed to advance the field.

Access to health care for gaming disorder: A patient-centred approach to address the continuum of need

“…First, the study sampled adults which limits the generalisability of these results to adolescents. To date, most of the clinical research on GD has focused on adolescent or school age samples (15). However, the sample was consistent with the typical pro le of predominantly young males in their early 20 s engaged in tertiary study (15,16,24).…”

“…Recent systematic reviews and meta-analyses have examined the evidence quality and effectiveness of GD prevention (10)(11)(12)(13) and treatment (14)(15)(16)(17). To date, research on prevention has tended to focus on school-based prevention programs.…”

“…The growing body of literature examining early intervention and treatment for GD highlights several important gaps (14,15,19,25). Zajac et al's (15) review of 15 studies reported that the majority had targeted school age samples with just six studies involving adults.…”

“…The growing body of literature examining early intervention and treatment for GD highlights several important gaps (14,15,19,25). Zajac et al's (15) review of 15 studies reported that the majority had targeted school age samples with just six studies involving adults. The majority of participants were male and almost all were conducted in university settings, however there was some heterogeneity in terms of problem severity (mild, moderate and severe problems) and time spent gaming (ranging daily to weekly sessions, and very low to high levels of gaming time).…”

Assessment and Treatment of Internet Gaming Disorder

“…To date, psychological treatments for IGD are considered "experimental" (as opposed to "probably efficacious" or "wellestablished") based on Chambless and Hollon's (1998) criteria for empirically supported treatments (Zajac et al, 2017). The experimental nature of these treatments has primarily been due to a number of identified methodological concerns, such as small sample sizes, lack of randomization, and the lack of control groups (King et al, 2017;Zajac et al, 2019). However, there is currently some promise for the use of cognitivebehavioral therapy (CBT) to treat IGD (Petry, 2019;Stevens et al, 2019;Winkler et al, 2013).…”