Gaming 'Addiction' Can Be Blamed on Parents, Society, says Clinic Founder

Video game addiction may not be a true addiction after all, according to Keith Bakker, the founder and head of Europe's first and only clinic to treat gaming addicts. Video game "addiction" is certainly not unique to Europe. In fact, there have been many cases in Asia of MMO gamers getting ill or even dying because of compulsive and continuous playing of online games in Internet cafes.

Nevertheless, Bakker, who has treated hundreds of young gamers at The Smith & Jones Centre in Amsterdam since it opened in 2006, has told the BBC that he believes gaming "addiction" is really more a social problem than it is a psychological one.

Although abstinence-based treatment models have had very high success rates for people at the clinic who also exhibit other addictive behaviors such as drinking and taking drugs, Bakker thinks that this kind of cross-addiction affects only 10 percent of gamers. For the rest of the "gaming addicts," who spend four hours a day or more playing games, Bakker doesn't see addiction counseling as the solution.

"These kids come in showing some kind of symptoms that are similar to other addictions and chemical dependencies," Bakker noted. "But the more we work with these kids the less I believe we can call this addiction. What many of these kids need is their parents and their school teachers - this is a social problem."

"This gaming problem is a result of the society we live in today," he added. "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."

Indeed, one 18-year-old gamer being treated at the clinic in Amsterdam said he was spending at least 10 hours a day playing Call of Duty 4 because he never got the help he needed from his parents or his teachers at school.

"Call of Duty was somewhere I felt accepted for the first time in my life," he said. "I was never helped by my parents or my school. At the clinic I also feel accepted and have come out of myself. I liked gaming because people couldn't see me, they accepted me as my online character - I could be good at something and feel part of a group. I was aware that I played too much but I didn't know what to do. But it helped me because I could be aggressive and get my anger and frustration out online."

In light of Bakker's realization, the clinic has changed its treatment program to focus more on developing activity-based social and communications skills to help gamers rejoin society, the BBC said. "If I continue to call gaming an addiction it takes away the element of choice these people have," Bakker pointed out. "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."

source:gamedaily.com