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. 2015 Sep;4(3):119-23.
doi: 10.1556/2006.4.2015.009. Epub 2015 May 27.

Are we overpathologizing everyday life? A tenable blueprint for behavioral addiction research

Joël Billieux  1   2 , Adriano Schimmenti  3 , Yasser Khazaal  4 , Pierre Maurage  1   2 , Alexandre Heeren  1
Affiliations

Are we overpathologizing everyday life? A tenable blueprint for behavioral addiction research

Joël Billieux et al. J Behav Addict. 2015 Sep.

Abstract

Background Behavioral addiction research has been particularly flourishing over the last two decades. However, recent publications have suggested that nearly all daily life activities might lead to a genuine addiction. Methods and aim In this article, we discuss how the use of atheoretical and confirmatory research approaches may result in the identification of an unlimited list of "new" behavioral addictions. Results Both methodological and theoretical shortcomings of these studies were discussed. Conclusions We suggested that studies overpathologizing daily life activities are likely to prompt a dismissive appraisal of behavioral addiction research. Consequently, we proposed several roadmaps for future research in the field, centrally highlighting the need for longer tenable behavioral addiction research that shifts from a mere criteria-based approach toward an approach focusing on the psychological processes involved.

Keywords: DSM; behavioral addictions; diagnosis; everyday behaviors; mental health; psychopathology.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Behavioral addiction papers published between 1990 and 2014 Note: The research was performed on PUBMED. All articles included mentioned either “behavioral addiction” or “behavioural addiction” as keywords. The highest number of published papers was in 2013 (n = 2563), the year in which the DSM-5 was released. The research was performed in February 2015.
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References

    1. American Psychiatric Association (APA) (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Washington, DC.
    1. Billieux J., Deleuze J., Griffiths M. D. & Kuss D. J. (2014). Internet gaming addiction: The case of massively multiplayer online role playing games. In El-Guebaly N., Galanter M. & Carrá G. (Eds.), The textbook of addiction treatment: International perspectives (pp. 1515–1525). New York: Springer.
    1. Billieux J., Philippot P., Schmid C., Maurage P., de Mol J. & van der Linden M. (2014). Is dysfunctional use of the mobile phone a behavioural addiction? Confronting symptom-based versus process-based approaches. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy. Epub ahead of print, doi: 10.1002/cpp.1910 - PubMed
    1. Billieux J., Thorens G., Khazaal Y., Zullino D., Achab S. & van der Linden M. (2015). Problematic involvement in online games: A cluster analytic approach. Computers in Human Behavior, 43, 242–250.
    1. Billieux J., van der Linden M., Achab S., Khazaal Y, Paraskev-opoulos L., Zullino D. & Thorens G. (2013). Why do you play World of Warcraft? An in-depth exploration of self-reported motivations to play online and in-game behaviours in the virtual world of Azeroth. Computers in Human Behavior, 29, 103–109.

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