Is video-game addiction a mental disorder The telltale signs 1 : teens holing up in their rooms, ignoring friends, family, even food or a shower, while 2 and belligerence soars. The culprit isn’t alcohol or drugs. It’s video games, which for certain kids can be 3 as heroin, some doctors contend. A leading council of the nation’s largest doctors’ group wants to 4 as a psychiatric disorder, to raise awareness and enable sufferers to 5 for treatment. In a report prepared for the American Medical Association’s annual policy meeting starting 6 , the council asks the group to lobby for the disorder to be included in 7 created and published by the American Psychiatric Association. It likely won’t happen 8 . Video game makers scoff at the notion that their products 9 . Even some mental health experts say labeling the habit a formal addiction 10 . Dr. James Scully, the psychiatric association’s medical director, said the group will seriously consider the AMA report in the long process of 11 . The current manual was published in 1994; the next edition is to 12 . Up to 90 percent of American youngsters 13 and as many as 15 percent of them— 14 —may be addicted, according to data cited in the AMA council’s report. Joyce Peterson of Frisco, Texas, said her 17-year-old son, Michael, 15 . Over nearly two years, video and Internet games transformed him from an outgoing, 16 into a reclusive manipulator who flunked two 10th grade classes and 17 playing a popular online video game. "My father was an alcoholic, and I 18 in Michael," Peterson said. "We battled him until October of last year," she said. "We went to therapists, we 19 . He would threaten us physically. He would curse and call us every name imaginable. It was 20 ."