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Reply to comments on ‘behavioural (non‐chemical) addictions’
Author(s) -
MARKS ISAAC
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
british journal of addiction
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.424
H-Index - 193
eISSN - 1360-0443
pISSN - 0952-0481
DOI - 10.1111/j.1360-0443.1990.tb01625.x
Subject(s) - addiction , dysfunctional family , psychology , psychotherapist , psychological intervention , panic , action (physics) , clinical psychology , developmental psychology , psychiatry , anxiety , physics , quantum mechanics
Behavioural addictions involve routines of dysfunctional and purposeful behaviour. Taxonomy is a program for action and coloured by values. This is obvious in ‘panic disorder’ and may affect the classification of addictions. Biologically minded psychiatrists may attach less weight than do behavioural scientists to overarching similarities across chemical and nonchemical addictive syndromes. There is no foolproof guide to classification, be it response to therapy, aetiology, maintaining mechanism, or phenomenology. Communalities across behavioural and chemical addictions do not exclude potentially important differences among them. Both pharmacological and behavioural interventions may be useful in different cases. Control over an addictive routine is reduced rather than lost and may rise with treatment. Broadening one's repertoire of activities may be preventive and therapeutic. Motivation to change is a multifactorial state that may vary with time and be augmented by therapy; lay organisations can have useful lessons for clinicians. Relevant political influences can be crucial and hard to modify.