The Mediating Effects of Affect on Associations between Impulsivity or Resilience and Internet Gaming Disorder.

Bomi Kim,Jiyoon Lee,Minkyung Park,Jung-Seok Choi,A Choi,Daun Shin,Myung Jung,Sun Chung,Dai Kim

doi:10.3390/jcm8081102

Abstract

Internet gaming disorder (IGD) is a new disease proposed by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-Fifth Edition (DSM-5), and has been studied extensively in relation to depression and impulsivity. The relationship between resilience and disease has been found in a variety of addictive disorders, but studies on IGD are lacking. In this study, 71 IGD patients and 78 healthy controls (HCs) were recruited. Impulsivity, resilience, affects, and the degree of internet game addiction were measured using formal tools. The measured values were analyzed by mediation analysis to evaluate the mediating role of affects on resilience and impulsivity related to IGD symptoms. The IGD group showed higher impulsivity, lower resilience, lower positive affect, and higher negative affect than the HC group. The mediation analysis showed that a positive affect was a mediator between impulsivity and the severity of addiction in both groups. Negative affect mediated impulsivity/resilience and the severity of addiction only in the IGD group. Although the results of this study are based on a narrow category of subjects, who are young male adults around 25 years of age, the results suggest that positive affect can be strengthened to prevent the IGD illness, and that illness symptoms may be alleviated by reducing negative affect.

Highlights

Since the development of the internet, the internet has had many impacts on our society
A comparison of the demographic and clinical characteristics of the internet gaming disorder (IGD) and healthy controls (HCs) groups showed that the Young’s Internet Addiction Test (Y-IAT) scores (t(1.706) = 8.64, p < 0.001), Barratt Impulsiveness Scale-11 (BIS-11) scores (t(0.001) = 5.22, p < 0.001), and negative scores on the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) (t(0.398) = 4.42, p < 0.001) were significantly higher in the IGD group than in the HC group, and the CD-RISC scores (t(2.972) = −5.32, p < 0.001) and positive scores on the PANAS (t(1.809) = −4.99, p < 0.001) were significantly lower in the IGD group than in the HC group (Table 1)
The final conclusions of this study suggest that IGD can be prevented by enhancing positive affect, and that addiction can be moderated by modulating negative affect after IGD

Summary

Introduction

Since the development of the internet, the internet has had many impacts on our society. Since 2005, when the phenomenon related to Internet game addiction has been reported, and various countries have received varying degrees of attention [1]. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-Fifth Edition (DSM-5) proposed that internet gaming disorder (IGD) is a psychiatric disorder that requires further research [2]. The 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), which was released in 2018, includes a definition for gaming disorder [3]. The prevalence rate of IGD is 1.2–8.5%, and the prevalence rate varies according to diagnostic criteria and age of the subjects [4,5,6,7]. IGD has been associated with psychiatric symptoms, such as mood disorders, behavior problems, and anxiety [8]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion