Plugged In A Clinicians And Families Guide To Online Video Game Addiction Deals on Plugged In

Plugged In: A Clinicians' and Families' Guide to Online Video Gam...

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Editorial Reviews

An epidemic has been growing over the past ten years. What had started out as a simple game has grown into a social dilemma. Video games without pause buttons are played worldwide by easily over ten million gamers. Their hold on gamers has led to suicides, homicides, and dying of malnutrition in the worst-case scenarios. In the better instances, they have ruined families, educations and careers. Plugged In is a family’s and clinician’s best friend in the war against online game addiction. Secrets of the biological and psychological factors of online game addiction are revealed by a clinician and experienced video gamer. Tools for assessment and step-by-step treatment recommendations are provided. Learn the language of gamers and why it is so hard for them to unplug from online games and get back into life.

Customer Reviews

Should have been better

Reviewed by Peter M. Alexander, 2009-08-11

The author (Terry R. Waite) has valuable experience, and some good recommendations. Without those, however, I would have rated this book only 1 star, because of serious problems that could have been solved with some good editing. As others have noted, the publishers remark that they "allowed this work to remain exactly as the author intended, verbatim, without editorial input." This is a highly unusual and emphatic statement, and it explains several problems. First, the book is filled with typos ("clients" for "client's," "not" for "no," "whish" for "wish," etc.). If you are the kind of reader who is bothered by such errors -- and there are many, often several on a page -- then you should look for another book. There are also many stylistic inconsistencies and grammatical errors that could have been solved by an editor.
More troubling, the text is poorly organized. Sentence structure is clumsy, paragraph divisions are not meaningful, and at times the text seems to lurch from one topic to another. As another reviewer noted, the author seems uncertain whether he is writing for parents or other therapists. Some aspects of the topic are well explained, but others are not. Some jargon is included in a glossary, but other unusual terms and acronyms are introduced with no explanation. This is all a shame, because the author has valuable experience as both a therapist who deals with gaming addictions, and a game player himself.
If you have a child, partner or family members who is addicted to gaming, there are better books for you to read. If you are a therapist, you may find parts of this helpful, and you probably will want to own this to have a complete library on the subject. But I'm sorry I cannot give it a better review.

Contains useful advice and tools gained from author's personal experience

Reviewed by T. SCOTT, 2009-06-12

The publisher's page has the warning that they had no editorial input. Be warned! It is a great shame that the author's ambivalence about his target audience for this work interferes with his valuable message. By having it unedited I can only assume that he is trying to demonstrate to gamers a personal empathy. Perhaps he is trying to lower their defences and lure them into reading the book.
However, given that it is the desperate family member (me) that is likely to buy this, then recommend it to a therapist/clinician - then clinician recommend it to many - it needs to appeal to the latter two groups.
In this First Edition, the use of the wrong words (detoured instead of deterred, there instead of their, minuetes instead of minutes etc), over 30 typos and poor grammar is highly distracting. Some sentences have to be reread to understand what is being conveyed.
The author vacillates between his own addictive thrills and his hobby horse of having online gaming addiction listed in the DSM or ICD international disease classifications. These dalliances would be better compartmentalised within the work and not gratuitously and randomly infused.
I have a 24 year old son with a serious gaming addiction. He has lost his job because of it. His relationship is in jeopardy and his online tribal affiliations have more significance to him than his own family. He suffers narcolepsy after (and inspite of) gaming and cannot wake for up to 17 hrs. This follows a history of enuresis until his teenage years and learning difficulties. I was shocked recently to find that, after all these years, we as parents (and his GPs) had missed a major underlying syndrome. He has Klinefelter's. Other issues also made him more vulnerable with ADD, depression and esteem issues identified.
Finally we are starting to get to the bottom of what has made him vulnerable to this addiction and we can start a journey to work with professionals in support of our wonderful boy lost in space.
This book cost me about $60 when freight was added and I feel it is useful enough to be worth that to me. But PLEASE Mr Waite, swallow your ego and & let the editors help you with the Second Edition URGENTLY. This book is worth expanding on and improving

An important book

Reviewed by Gamersmom, 2008-02-21

I am a family physician and the parent of an addicted gamer, so I read this book with great interest.

Mr. Waite is a therapist who works with video game-addicted children. A word of caution: He is a gamer (former addict, currently a casual player) and devotes one of the appendices to an "outpatient maintenance schedule" for returning an addicted child to casual play. This was the one chapter in the book that I did not agree with, as I am not convinced that it is possible for a true gaming addict to ever again play casually.
Otherwise, there are good explanations of what these games are all about, including the addictive features and how they are designed to hook the gamer. There is a chapter directed at therapists describing treatment methods, and a Video Game Assessment Tool to use in diagnosing the problem. Due to the fact that the book is a very quick read, this might be one to bring in to your child's therapist and have them read it if they have no experience in video game addiction. There is an excellent discussion of the physiology of addiction, with a comparison of addiction to chemical substances and addiction to games. Mr. Waite does advocate inclusion of video game addiction in the DSM-V, but also discusses some diagnoses that mental health professionals can use in treating this problem until that happens. There is a glossary of cyber slang, and a chapter describing the top ten MMORPG's.

This is an excellent book for spouses and parents who don't know anything about the subject and suddenly find themselves needing to learn---fast.

All in all, a good book containing good information for both family members and clinicians. If you or a loved one need treatment but can't find a therapist or counselor who knows about gaming addiction, see a counselor who specializes in addictions in general and buy them a copy of this book as a starting point.

getting it right

Reviewed by Linda H. Hinds, 2007-07-30

Although I am not a clinitian, I found the information in this book really helpful in understanding how easily we become addicted to things in our life, not just drugs/alcohol. It is a real concern as I have family members who are having issues with there associations in the family and with friends that seem to have this issue at the cause. I feel this was a helpful book in learning about addiction.

Reading this book was very easy and helpfull.

Reviewed by PixieDragon, 2007-07-15

I bought this book because my husband and I have played many online games. He plays them much more than I and sometimes to a point that we have to "discuss" cutting back on the time spent online.
Reading this book was very easy and helpfull as well as interesting. With the length of the book about 80 pages it was a quick read and the author of the book was well aware of the type of people that would be reading it and directed the information to them. The only difficultly was if someone had no psychology background they might get a little lost in the clinical details. However, anyone that is interested in the subject and researching it should have touched on these behavioral details already. With both of us reading this book we where able to talk about the subject of online gaming openly. Information can be very powerful to solve problems and this book breaches the subject of online game addition as a friend that is right there with you instead of being accusatory. Several of our friends are also heavily involved in online gaming and I am strongly recommending this book to them. It is good information for any heavy gamer or their family.