lean not unto thine own understanding - Proverbs

From the Associated Press.  Talk about treating the symptom and not the disease.

The telltale signs are ominous: teens holing up in their rooms, ignoring friends, family, even food and a shower, while grades plummet and belligerence soars.  The culprit isn't alcohol or drugs. It's video games, which for certain kids can be as powerfully addictive as heroin, some doctors contend.  A leading council of the nation's largest doctors' group wants to have this behavior officially classified as a psychiatric disorder, to raise awareness and enable sufferers to get insurance coverage for treatment.

In a report prepared for the American Medical Association's annual policy meeting starting Saturday in Chicago, the council asks the group to lobby for the disorder to be included in a widely used mental illness manual created and published by the American Psychiatric Association.  AMA delegates could vote on the proposal as early as Monday.

It likely won't happen without heated debate.  Video game makers scoff at the notion that their products can cause a psychiatric disorder.  Even some mental health experts say labeling the habit a formal addiction is going too far.

Dr. James Scully, the psychiatric association's medical director, said the group will seriously consider the AMA report in the long process of revising the diagnostic manual.  The current manual was published in 1994; the next edition is to be completed in 2012.

Up to 90 percent of American youngsters play video games and as many as 15 percent of them — more than 5 million kids — may be addicted, according to data cited in the AMA council's report.

Joyce Protopapas of Frisco, Texas, said her 17-year-old son, Michael, was a video addict. Over nearly two years, video and Internet games transformed him from an outgoing, academically gifted teen into a reclusive manipulator who flunked two 10th grade classes and spent several hours day and night playing a popular online video game called World of Warcraft.

“My father was an alcoholic ... and I saw exactly the same thing” in Michael, Protopapas said. “We battled him until October of last year,” she said. “We went to therapists, we tried taking the game away.  He would threaten us physically.  He would curse and call us every name imaginable,” she said. “It was as if he was possessed.”

When she suggested to therapists that Michael had a video game addiction, “nobody was familiar with it,” she said. “They all pooh-poohed it.”  Last fall, the family found a therapist who “told us he was addicted, period.” They sent Michael to a therapeutic boarding school, where he has spent the past six months — at a cost of $5,000 monthly that insurance won't cover, his mother said.

A support group called On-Line Gamers Anonymous has numerous postings on its Web site from gamers seeking help. Liz Woolley, of Harrisburg, Pa., created the site after her 21-year-old son fatally shot himself in 2001 while playing an online game she says destroyed his life.

In a February posting, a 13-year-old identified only as Ian told of playing video games for nearly 12 hours straight, said he felt suicidal and wondered if he was addicted.  “I think i need help,” the boy said.

Postings also come from adults, mostly men, who say video game addiction cost them jobs, family lives and self-esteem.

According to the report prepared by the AMA's Council on Science and Public Health, based on a review of scientific literature, “dependence-like behaviors are more likely in children who start playing video games at younger ages.”  Overuse most often occurs with online role-playing games involving multiple players, the report says. Blizzard Entertainment's teen-rated, monster-killing World of Warcraft is among the most popular.  A company spokesman declined to comment on whether the games can cause addiction.

A woman in the New Haven, Conn., area who bought the game for her 15-year-old son last year, says he got hooked on it. “Now that I look back on it, it's like I went out and bought him his first Jack Daniel's,” said the 49-year-old woman who didn't want her name used to spare her son from ridicule.

Dr. Martin Wasserman, a pediatrician who heads the Maryland State Medical Society, said the AMA proposal will help raise awareness and called it “the right thing to do.”

But Michael Gallagher, president of the Entertainment Software Association, said the trade group sides with psychiatrists “who agree that this so-called 'video-game addiction' is not a mental disorder.”   “The American Medical Association is making premature conclusions without the benefit of complete and thorough data,” Gallagher said.

Dr. Karen Pierce, a psychiatrist at Chicago's Children's Memorial Hospital, said she sees at least two children a week who play video games excessively.  “I saw somebody this week who hasn't been to bed, hasn't showered ... because of video games,” she said. “He is really a mess.”  She said she treats it like any addiction and creating a separate diagnosis is unnecessary.

Dr. Michael Brody, head of a TV and media committee at the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, agreed. He praised the AMA council for bringing attention to the problem, but said excessive video-game playing could be a symptom for other things, such as depression or social anxieties that already have their own diagnoses.

“You could make lots of behavioral things into addictions. Why stop at video gaming?” Brody asked.  Why not Blackberries, cell phones, or other irritating habits, he said.

Silly man!  Because Blackberries are a rich, popular teen's and businessman's addiction! 

Seriously, though.  This was in my paper along with a feature article on a local community theater doing "High School Musical".  And I think, okay.  In a world where The Powers That Be offers teenagers the following: 1) High School Musical; 2) Nancy Drew and Bratz movies; 3) Campus Life (Christian social group, in case that's only a Nebraska thing); 4) The Marines... does anyone really wonder why some of the ones that don't fit those models turn to videogames?  And why they also might get systematically fucked up?  And then of course we put them into psych wards.  Man, this country is really excellent at destroying its adolescents. 

and death shall have no dominion.

"Where have you been?" 
"Away from those fucking people."

SOLARIS (2002):  Many people will tell you that this movie is, quite simply, boring.  Dull.  A waste of time and space.  I've seen reviewers give it half a star out of five.  Of course, those same people probably gave Eragon two stars.  One of the reviewers say that if you find this movie boring, you will be told that you just aren't smart enough to understand it.  I won't say that.  But I will say that maybe you came into it expecting something else. 

Some background.  The plot is sort of simple, I guess.  George Clooney is a shrink with a dead wife and goes to a space station orbiting a planet, Solaris, to help the small crew with the psychological breakdown they suffered when they neared Solaris.  They tell him until "it" starts "happening" to him, there's no use talking.  But "it happens" soon enough - his dead wife appears, flesh and blood.  He frantically shoves the first one out into deep space through the airlock chamber, but she comes back as soon as he dreams about her again.  Turns out they all have these "visitors" - visitors who don't die, and don't go away.  They are facsimiles of the original deceased person created by the planet, and they go insane along with the astronauts. 

The 1972 version based on the book was originally billed Russia's answer to 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is very interesting.  I definitely saw that this movie could have been subtitled:  This is Why We in Russia Don't Go to Church.  While this movie definitely, definitely is not an atheistic kind of movie - there are great and complex forces at work here that are never understood - it has Cormac McCarthy's religious style: shaking your fist at God.  To me the most poignant point of the movie was George Clooney's wife, Rheya-Bot Version 2.0, saying as she looks at Solaris, "I don't understand... It made me but I can't talk to it.  But it must hear me.  I can't live like this.  Not understanding."   She's talking about God - her God is Solaris.  It reminded me of the part I remember most about Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence - when they discover that the evil company has been infusing robot dolls with souls of little girls, the human cop says, "Poor girls", but Batou, the android cop, says, "What about the dolls?  Did they ask to have souls?"  I mean, this movie is dealing with really, really serious issues fundamental to humanity and consciousness and identity, and doing so in a very quiet, subtle way.

It is a slow movie, but it's the kind of movie you just have to have the patience to sink into, like a good leather couch.  Let yourself be immersed in it.  It's absolutely beautifully done - the cinematography and the music are stunning - and it's quite interesting to watch what happens to the characters.  One character, in particular, reacts with extreme hostility to her visitor (whom we never see), saying of these visitors, "They aren't human.  And I want humans to win, don't you?  Whose side are you on?"  She also says that she does not want to go home yet because she wants to destroy the visitors, "because that means I'm smarter than it is."  Her name is Gordon, she's a physicist who's sent to assess Solaris' economic potential, and I think she represents how many Americans look at space movies.  They want Star Wars or Starship Troopers or Apollo 13 - it's the same heroics of Earth, just in space suits - they may tolerate Alien, but only for the gore, not for the desolation.  If Americans want philosophical aliens, they'll take an E.T. - deal with it on the home turf, you know.  But out there, in the quiet silence of space, miles from Earth?  Nasty.  The only way we are prepared to deal with space is if it's in mechanical or war terms - the Mars rover; colonization; space race; satellites.  When we discuss the prospect of intelligent life, all we say is, "bacteria."  And we would probably blast that bacteria with a thousand laser guns as soon as we found it.  In my opinion, NASA is not imaginative enough.  If you really are religious, if you really do think there is a God, why do you limit yourself to space as an economic prospect, should we completely destroy Earth?  If space is really the final frontier, do you think that a bunch of dead rocks floating around - with possibly some toxic gigantic bugs and Wookies here and there - is all there could be, in the entire universe?  Do you think it's going to come in the form of explosions? 

So, they will say that this movie is boring.  I won't say they aren't clever enough, but I will say perhaps they, like the astronauts, are just not ready for what Solaris has to say.  In Contact (which this movie is quite similar to), the aliens tell Jodie Foster that when Earth is ready, someone else will be sent out in the space ship and make contact - but not until we are ready.  Maybe the movie should be rewatched in 200, or 2000, years. - Highly Recommended. 

( I could tell you what's happening, but I don't know if it would really tell you what's happening. )