The relationship between gaming, self-harm, resilience, loneliness, and attachment in adulthood

Certain personality variables are not well explored in relation to addictive digital gaming, in particular, the role of attachment in relation to disordered gaming is not fully understood. Beyond attachment, we also focused on other intrapersonal variables such as resilience, self-harm, and feeling of loneliness. Additional objectives include assessing gaming disorder in terms of age, gender, and partner status.

The research design was quantitative. Data collection was conducted using an online set of questionnaires, which consists of: The Gaming Disorder Test (GDT), Adult Resilience Measure-Revised (ARM-R), Relationship Structures Questionnaire (ECR-RS), three items from the UCLA Loneliness Scale, and one item related to self-harm. The sample consisted of 561 respondents aged 18-50 years, a total of 488 gamers (16 of them were addicted) and 73 non-gamers.

The results show that younger age (p<0,001), male gender (p<0,001), and the absence of a partner relationship (p<0,001) are associated with higher rates of symptoms of digital gaming disorder. Addicted gamers show lower levels of resilience (p<0,001) and a higher incidence of self-harm (p<0,001). Higher rates of digital gaming disorder symptoms are also related to perceiving greater loneliness (p<0,001) and anxious or avoidant relationship attachment (p values will be more specified for concrete cases in thee-poster). These results can be useful for practitioners working with addicted players and prevention strategies as well as for other directions in research. The relationship between disordered gaming and self-harm suggests that practitioners ought to screen for potential self-harm risk in addicted gamers to improve their mental health and well-being.