KEY POINTS:
Compulsive shopping and internet addiction may soon be classified as official mental disorders like alcoholism and pathological gambling.
Canadian gambling counsellor John Macdonald, in Auckland for an international gambling conference, said compulsive shopping and computer addictions could be treated with similar clinical techniques to those used for gambling problems.
He said compulsive shopping, internet addiction, sexual compulsions, substance dependence and pathological gambling were all being proposed for a new category of "behavioural addictions" in the upcoming fifth version of the mental health bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
"Policy which supports treating the range of behavioural addictions in the same facility would increase both the cost-efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare provision," he said.
Mr Macdonald, the youth specialist in the gambling team at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, said young people started coming to him with computer and shopping problems in 2002.
In one case, a young man had started a career that his family wanted him to choose, but where he could not cope.
"The demands of that profession led his self-esteem to drop, and his way of dealing with that was to bury himself in his computer for increasing lengths of time. He was supervising 30 or 40 people, but the whole thing got to him.
"His company gave him disability leave." In another case, a young man with low self-esteem found that "the only way of feeling better was to buy the most prestigious brands of whatever he could ill-afford".
In a third case, a young man whose family put a lot of stress on financial success felt driven into gambling.
Mr Macdonald said all three behaviours involved doing things impulsively, emotional and physiological arousal, and cravings for the activity set off by cues such as advertisements.
All three behaviours released pleasurable chemicals in the brain, but also reduced the levels of other chemicals which normally kept impulses and cravings under control.
All three could be treated by interrupting the compulsive behaviour and working on the issues which sparked the behaviour.
