Uzależnienie od internetu jako poważne wyzwanie diagnostyczne

Dear Editor,

The article by Janiszewski et al. entitled “Inter¬net addiction – diagnostic difficulties and treat¬ment” [1] published in your journal caught our attention and prompted further reflection. The problem of addiction is widely known, but it was not until the 21st century that we faced the new challenge of internet addiction. The paper focuses on discrepancies in diagnostic criteria and clearly presents the problem of internet addiction. While we agree with the conclusions presented by the authors, we would like to propose our own ideas we believe would be worth considering in future work.
Firstly, we would add a longitudinal perspective to the article. Observing patients for at least a number of years would help us gain knowledge about periods of remission, factors increasing the likelihood of relapse and the dynamics of symptoms. Focusing mainly on reviewing data from pharmacological treatment and psychothe¬rapy is extremely important in this case, but supplementing this with longitudinal studies could increase the effectiveness of future therapy. Many articles confirm the value of longitudinal studies in psychiatry. The work by Anstey and Hofer [2] confirms their impact on the identification of predictors of change over time, assessment of treatment outcomes and risk factors among other things.
In addition, we would like to emphasise, and draw attention to, the importance of standardising diagnostic tools [3]. In modern medicine, more and more new scales are being developed e.g. for cate-gorising patients though their validation in a cli¬nical context is rarely discussed [3]. The COSMIN (Consensus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement Instruments) guidelines clearly state that measurement tools should undergo formal validation – assessment of reliability, vali¬dity and sensitivity to change [3]. In Poland, only an adaptation of the standard IAT (Internet Addiction Test) is available, while the IAT-F (Internet Addiction Test for Families) version has not yet been adapted [4]. As we know, the test takes into account the observations of parents/legal guardians, which can provide us with an objective description of the patient [5]. For example, in the work of Jeong et al. [6], where children underwent self-assessment, we observe a high percentage of false negative results; in this case, by using a different method, researchers could obtain a realistic and reliable picture of the patient.
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