This paper was commissioned by Professor Gernot Wersig of the Freie Universität, Berlin in 1980, as part of his Project, Methodeninstrumentarium zur Benutzforschung in Information und Dokumentation. It attempted to set out what was, for the time, a novel perspective on appropriate methodologies for the study of human information seeking behaviour, focusing on qualitative methods and action rese...

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) frequently co-occurs with addictive behaviors. Recently, the addictive behavior of excessive smartphone use is being widely researched. Impulsivity commonly relates to PTSD severity and problematic smartphone use. However, unexamined is the mediating role of impulsivity facets (lack of premeditation, negative urgency, sensation seeking, and lack of persevera...

BACKGROUND The consequences of chronic alcohol dependence cause important health and economic burdens worldwide. Relapse rates after standard treatment (medication and psychotherapy) are high. There is evidence from in vivo investigations and from studies in patients that the brain's reward system is critically involved in the development and maintenance of addictive behavior, suggesting that m...

Alcohol consumption is an integral part of daily life in many societies. The benefits associated with the production, sale, and use of alcoholic beverages come at an enormous cost to these societies. The World Health Organization ranks alcohol as one of the primary causes of the global burden of disease in industrialized countries. Alcohol-related diseases, especially alcoholism, are the result...

UNLABELLED The potential adverse consequences, personal distress, shame and guilt presented by patients who suffer from sexual addiction require a more in-depth understanding of the phenomenology and psychobiology of this disorder. METHODS A bibliographic review was conducted using MEDLINE and EBSCO databases with the following keywords: "sexual addiction," "hypersexuality," "compulsive sexua...

N Engl J Med 2003;349:975-86. Copyright © 2003 Massachusetts Medical Society. rug addiction is a chronic, relapsing disorder in which compulsive drug-seeking and drug-taking behavior persists despite serious negative consequences. Addictive substances induce pleasant states (euphoria in the initiation phase) or relieve distress. Continued use induces adaptive changes in the central nervous syst...

The question of addiction specifically concerns (1), the process by which drug-taking behavior, in certain individuals, evolves into compulsive patterns of drug-seeking and drug-taking behavior that take place at the expense of most other activities and (2), the inability to cease drug-taking; the problem of relapse. In this paper current biopsychological views of addiction are critically evalu...