Depression, loneliness, anger behaviours and interpersonal relationship styles in male patients admitted to internet addiction outpatient clinic in Turkey (2014)

• ¹Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, Bülent Ecevit University, Zonguldak, Turkey, [email protected].

BACKGROUND:

‘Internet addiction’ is excessive computer use that interferes with daily life of a person. We designed this study in order to evaluate the predictor effect of depression, loneliness, anger and interpersonal relationship styles for internet addiction as well as develop a model.

SUBJECTS AND METHODS:

Forty (40) male internet addicted patients were selected from our hospital’s internet Addiction Outpatient Clinic. During the study, the Internet Addiction Test (IAT), the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the State Trait Anger Expression Scale (STAXI), the UCLA-Loneliness Scale (UCLA-LS), and the Interpersonal Relationship Styles Scale (IRSS) were used for the evaluation of the patients.

RESULTS:

The results of this study showed that the ‘duration of internet use’ (B=2.353, p=0.01) and STAXI ‘anger in’ subscale (B=1.487, p=0.01) were the predictors of internet addiction.

CONCLUSION:

When the clinicians suspect for the internet overuse, regulation of internet usage might be helpful. Psychiatric treatments for expressing anger and therapies that focus on validation of the feelings may be useful.