The association between internet addiction and psychiatric co-morbidity: a meta-analysis

Research article

Roger C Ho, Melvyn WB Zhang, Tammy Y Tsang, Anastasia H Toh, Fang Pan, Yanxia Lu,Cecilia Cheng, Paul S Yip, Lawrence T Lam, Ching-Man Lai, Hiroko Watanabe and Kwok-Kei Mak

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BMC Psychiatry 2014, 14:183  doi:10.1186/1471-244X-14-183

Published: 20 June 2014

Abstract (provisional)

Background

This study evaluates the association between Internal Addiction (IA) and psychiatric co-morbidity in the literature.

Methods

Meta-analyses were conducted on cross-sectional, case-control and cohort studies which examined the relationship between IA and psychiatric co-morbidity. Selected studies were extracted from major online databases. The inclusion criteria are as follows: 1) studies conducted on human subjects; 2) IA and psychiatric co-morbidity were assessed by standardised questionnaires; and 3) availability of adequate information to calculate the effect size. Random-effects models were used to calculate the aggregate prevalence and the pooled odds ratios (OR).

Results

Eight studies comprising 1641 patients suffering from IA and 11210 controls were included. Our analyses demonstrated a significant and positive association between IA and alcohol abuse (OR = 3.05, 95% CI = 2.14-4.37, z = 6.12, P - 0.001), attention deficit and hyperactivity (OR = 2.85, 95% CI = 2.15-3.77, z = 7.27, P - 0.001), depression (OR = 2.77, 95% CI = 2.04-3.75, z = 6.55, P - 0.001) and anxiety (OR = 2.70, 95% CI = 1.46-4.97, z = 3.18, P = 0.001).

Conclusions

IA is significantly associated with alcohol abuse, attention deficit and hyperactivity, depression and anxiety.

The complete article is available as a provisional PDF. The fully formatted PDF and HTML versions are in production.