Parents Neglect - D&D named.....

[Kae'Yoss]

Wow, I must have petered you off big time that you lay into me like that. Have I stomped on your sand castle recently?

 

[Elf Witch]

I think there are two things going on when we say someone is addicted.


First I think that certain people are prone to addiction. There is something in their personality that makes them self medicate that is what addiction is. A person using drugs, sex, booze, gambling, video games, food ect to deaden the pain they have in their life or to fill a hole or some other kind of unhappiness.

Some of these have a physical aspect like drugs but a non addictive personality is not likely to get hooked on drugs that do have a physical aspect. And even in addictions that don't have a physical aspect the person giving them up can go through symptoms of withdrawal.

Second what their addiction of choice is. With an addictive personality anything can become an addiction.

These parents have an addictive personality they need treatment but they also desereve jail time because they harmed their children.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Wow, I must have petered you off big time that you lay into me like that. Have I stomped on your sand castle recently?

No. You have not. It was directed at your comment and not you.

And as it evidently crossed the line, I apologize.

 

[-SIN-]

$10 says the reporter got kicked from her gaming group when she was a kid!

As for the 'Addiction' side of things - Absolute Tosh!

What's next??

I'm gonna get my doctor to write to my boss explaining how I'm addicted to 'not working', have me signed off indefinatly, and IF I'm lucky, I'll get a fat giro from the government.

When Doctors - a.k.a Highly Educated people - come out with like that, it's kinda worrying, unless of course the investigation was headed by DR Bush.... Then it makes perfect sense! lol

 

[Col_Pladoh]

First and foremost:

The parents in question clearly are mentally abnormal. Their obsessive playing of computer games and so horribly neglecting their two children are indicative of psychosis and not an indictment of whatever game or games the couple were playing.

Cheerio,
Gary

 

[Kahuna Burger]

I can understand and appreciate that some things have a physical and/or chemical component that people get addicted to. Certain things affect people's bodies on chemical level: cocaine, nicotine, alcohol, caffeine, etc.

But things like gambling, sex, and video games don't have the chemical component. (Well, maybe sex does.) I mean, there are people who have addictive personalities. They can get addicted to TV shows, boyfriends/girlfriends, and checking that their oven is off. Why don’t doctors just label a person as an addictive personality rather than labeling the choice of addiction as the problem?

In general, I would say that people that can become so addicted to a videogame that they neglect their own children, would most likely have done so even if they hadnt been playing. There would just have been another cause.

I agree with this opinion. Most likely they'd have just gotten addicted to drugs, booze, gambling, or some kind of extreme sports or whatnot that causes adrenaline and/or endorphines to be generated in them. Video/computer games most likely weren't the problem so much as addiction-prone personalities and irresponsible tendencies. Video games don't generate obsession any moreso than sports do, and in the annoying jock-culture we live in, nobody thinks sports are bad, do they? -_-

etc, etc....

So, any of you guys correcting doctors' and researchers' "mistakes" actually doctors, psychologists or researchers in addiction and/or addictive personalities? Heck, I'd settle for a social worker or a psychology minor with an emphasis in brain and behavior over all this wagon circling.

Some behaviors are more potentially addictive than other behaviors, just like some chemical substances are more potentially addictive than other chemical substances. It has nothing to do with you, it has nothing to do with a geek hating culture ignoring jocks and picking on geeks, it has nothing to do with 80's grandstanding social campaigners and a stigma against D&D. It has to do with what professional expereince and research actually shows, as opposed to what you would like to think it true.

Yes some people have more or less likelyhood to become addicted to any given activity. That doesn't mean that people are as likely to become addicted to Red Sox paraphinelia as gambling, or as likely to become addicted to PEZ as WoW. Instead, knowledge about addictive personalities and knowledge about more addictive activities and substances can be used together to guide some folks to enjoy their prebudgeted and harmless trip to Vegas and others to cancel the WoW account and focus on their PEZ dispenser collection....

And that's about enough time spent banging my head against this particular wall, I guess. :\

 

[roguerouge]

There have been several reported cases of these sorts of things happening with Everquest amd WoW through the past few years as well

The fact that there are so many people playing in these communities makes it inevitable, statistically speaking, that a small number of people will abuse the activity, and, in doing so, harm others as well as themselves. These cases will get disproportionate coverage on the net, however, because of the greater interest in that arena and due to the fact that an alcoholic or gambler harming his loved ones is so common as to not be newsworthy.

I will, however, agree with a prior poster that activity that rewards us through pleasure can become addictive: gambling, eating food, not eating food, nookie, shopping... these are all recognized as potentially addictive pursuits for a small percentage of people. i see no reason not to add video games to that list, especially given how they are designed to reward behavior with pleasures (lights, nice sounds, achievement, additional power, etc.)

 

[Umbran]

Video game addiction was cited with the addiction part being emphasised more than once in the article, there's no need for role players or video game players to be threatened by it either.)

The analogy to alcohol fails, though, in that the public view of alcohol it generally different than that of D&D, RPGs, and video games. If in causal conversation you tell someone that you went to a bar and had a couple of drinks last night, in all likelihood the person won't bat an eye. If you tell them you spent the evening playing D&D, there's a far better chance that they're going to look at you funny and think you are at least a little weird.

Therein lies the difference - the public's understanding of alcohol is different form their understanding of gaming. So, the public's reaction to reports about D&D may well also differ.

If you heard a news report that reinforced an undeserved negative stereotype, would you find it odd that a member of the target group got defensive? Would you try to convince them to not worry about it? Because that's what's happening here.

 

[Jack99]

So, any of you guys correcting doctors' and researchers' "mistakes" actually doctors, psychologists or researchers in addiction and/or addictive personalities? Heck, I'd settle for a social worker or a psychology minor with an emphasis in brain and behavior over all this wagon circling.

I never said that if they werent addicted to a videogame, they would be addicted to something else. I said they would probably have neglected their kids anyway. No quite the same thing. In case it wasnt clear, my opinion is, that people who do neglect their kids have some fundemental (!) problem, that would "reveal" itself sooner or later and thus cause neglect, no matter if they play videogames or not.

I hope this is more understandable, english only being my third language makes it difficult at times to convey exactly what I mean.

Anyway

Why you would ever think that imprisonment would somehow improve their parenting skills - or make either of them a better person - is utterly beyond me and defies all logic.

Noone (at least I) said anything about parenting skills being improved by getting locked up. People who act like this should lose their right to ever have any contact with their kids, ever. The kids of this particular case (and in most of the others as well) are so young, so with a decent foster home, they should be fine.

YMMV ofc.

 

[Razz]

Needed something to do while waiting for a patch to download?

LOL Nice!