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Clinic admits game addiction isn't an addiction
Author: Joe MartinPublished: 26th November 2008
Games addiction isn't a psychological addiction, but rather a social disorder according to doctors.
According to Keith Bakker of The Smith and Jones Centre in Amsterdam, the first clinic set up to tackle game addiction exclusively, 99 percent of the people he works with are not true gaming addicts. Bakker claims that while the gamers who exhibit compulsive behaviours can be successfully cured of games addiction, the reality is that it is a larger social problem, not a purely psychological one.
"This gaming problem is a result of the society we live in today," Mr Bakker told the BBC. "Eighty per cent of the young people we see have been bullied at school and feel isolated. Many of the symptoms they have can be solved by going back to good old fashioned communication."
The centre is thus now moving away from the typical abstinence method which is used to treat true addictions such as drugs and sex and focusing more on activity-based social therapy.
"If I continue to call gaming an addiction it takes away the element of choice these people have," he says. "It's a complete shift in my thinking and also a shift in the thinking of my clinic and the way it treats these people," said Bakker.
Bakker also believes that the way to avoid compulsive gaming becoming an issue is communication, mainly between parents and children.
Have you ever worried about being a gaming addict? What's the most amount of time you've ever spent at a computer game in a single sitting? Compare notes in the forums.
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Comments (12)
It's a bit like "People die when they are killed."
Kind of like that. Take alcoholism: addiction or social disorder? Depends on why the person drinks. Usually it is a bit of both (and several other factors besides). Same difference.
Sell your gaming rig and buy 10 years old computer with integrated gpu :P
Grumble, grumble.. youngsters have no respect these days...
IMHO, if u know ur body limit (dont get physically sick), and more importantly, know how to manage ur priorities the bigger picture (such as, ur life), then u can play as much as u want..........
quite true
work, then family, then whatever hobby you have at the time
(i say work then family because you'd have much bigger problems for the entire family if you didn't work, and its the most likely case, though not always)
hehe I remember when I was playing GW, it would come up every hour after a couple of hours saying "you have been playing for X hrs please take a break" .... the only problem with that feature was that quite a few people took it as a challenge to get it as high as possible.
I do like the fact that this clinic has realized that it may actually be an issue with society not only the person who is playing a lot.
One more thing:
Aren't using drugs and consuming alcohol as much a choice as playing games?
Do these guys get paid for their "research"?
How much?
What qualification do you need?
Can I get a job?
Money for jam...
mmmmmm... jam!