Modern Maladies

A new disorder, internesia, is replacing depression as Australia's number one mental illness.

Psychologist Sigmund Flapjack said it is the first disease unique to the 21st Century.

Internesia (a combination of the words Internet and amnesia) affects people who are bitten by the Millennium Bug (pictured right) and who consequently spend too long at computer terminals.

Symptoms include sleep deprivation because they forget to go to bed, weight loss because they forget to eat, and financial crisis because they forget to go to work.

Internesia raised its ugly head in Penrith last week when a man was charged with causing grievous bodily harm.

After a full week of vainly trying to attract his attention, the man's wife hurled his PC through the kitchen window.

Enraged he threw her after it.

The judge sentenced the man to three months in a computer-free environment and then granted his wife a restraining order against the PC barring it from returning to the family home.