November 25, 2008
Compulsive Gamers - Not Addicts
According to the Smith & Jones Centre in Amsterdam, Europe's first and only clinic to treat gaming addiction, ninety per cent of the young people who seek treatment for compulsive computer gaming are not addicted. The clinic opened in 2006 and initially approached treatment for compulsive computer gaming as an addiction. It has recently revised its approach as it realized that compulsive gaming is more often a social rather than a psychological problem.
Keith Baker, the clinic director points out that "these kids come in showing some kind of symptoms that are similar to other addictions and chemical dependencies, 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."
The clinic has had very high success rates treating people who also show other addictive behaviours such as drug taking and excessive drinking using traditional abstinence-based treatment models. But Mr Bakker believes that this kind of cross-addiction affects only 10% of gamers. For the other 90% who may spend four hours a day or more playing games such as World of Warcraft, he no longer thinks addiction counselling is the way to treat these people.
By offering compulsive gamers a place where they feel accepted and where their voice will be heard, the clinic has found that the vast majority have been able to leave gaming behind and rebuild their lives. The clinic staff believe that the root cause of the huge growth in excessive gaming lies with parents who have failed in their duty of care. But it is important to note that 87% of online gamers are over the age of 18 - and once they cross that line, help is something they need to seek for themselves because parents no longer have the legal right to intervene.
For younger gamers, intervention may be the only way to break the cycle. That means stepping in and sometimes literally taking a child away from a computer, removing them from the game for a period of time until they become aware of their habits and begin to see there are other choices.
"It's a choice," says Baker. "These kids know exactly what they are doing and they just don't want to change. If no one is there to help them, then nothing will ever happen."
Research at Smith & Jones has found that feelings of anger and powerlessness often pre-exist a compulsion to play violent games. In some cases these people find each other in the gaming world and form a bond based on those feelings of alienation and anger. It is believed that if there was more commitment from parents and other care givers to listen to what their children are saying then these issues of isolation and frustration could be dealt with at the source and bring many young people out of the virtual world and back into real life.
Resources
Smith and Jones Clinic
Previous AATP Weblog Posts on Internet/Gaming Addiction
PubMed Search on Gaming Addiction
American Journal of Psychiatry Editorial - Jerald Block, MD
Internet Addiction