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Addicted to gaming or not?
Addicted to gaming or not?
Posted by .Icarus. on Nov 26th 2008 12:34
Ninety per cent of the young people who seek treatment for compulsive computer gaming are not addicted.
So says Keith Bakker the founder and head of Europe's first and only clinic to treat gaming addicts.
The Smith & Jones Centre in Amsterdam has treated hundreds of young gamers since the clinic opened in 2006.
But the clinic is changing its treatment as it realises that compulsive gaming is a social rather than a psychological problem.
Using traditional abstinence-based treatment models the clinic has had very high success rates treating people who also show other addictive behaviours such as drug taking and excessive drinking.
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.
"These kids come in showing some kind of symptoms that are similar to other addictions and chemical dependencies," he says.
"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."
In response to this realisation the clinic has changed its treatment programme for gamers to focus more on developing activity-based social and communications skills to help them rejoin society.
Now coming from someone who until very recently worked in the addiction field I feel quite strongly about the words the clinic in Amsterdam has chosen to use. The message they are trying to say is Gaming itself (the act of playing games) is not a physical addiction, what they have ended up saying is that gaming is not psychologically addictive.
To quote Mr Bakker again on this point "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." We have been treating patients in England using this exact method for a long time now suffering from drug addiction so I disagree quite strongly about his separation of the two. Saying that I'm sure Mr Bakker is just trying to not make gaming sound so dangerous (I hope).
Don't get me wrong I'm not suggesting that playing games will get you hooked but I do want to stress that ANYTHING can be addictive it just depends on what floats your boat or if you have the need to escape from something in your life, enough so to feel the need to hide in an addiction.Rant over Icarus signing out before my addiction of ranting about addiction sees me babbling to myself incoherently while the reader is thinking "get over it"...
Read the full story at the BBC
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Bub said: (Nov 26 2008 at 14:11:59 GMT)
your an addict Icarus! <3
Fean0r said: (Nov 26 2008 at 22:09:11 GMT)
:)
Data. said: (Nov 27 2008 at 10:50:06 GMT)
im an addict :D
[pingu] said: (Nov 27 2008 at 12:10:08 GMT)
I also am an addict!!
Fax said: (Nov 27 2008 at 13:04:18 GMT)
same, i'm an e-junkie :)
Dexxor said: (Nov 27 2008 at 18:09:49 GMT)
Im not addicted, I just choose to play alot.
:D
XUL_DeMiGoD said: (Nov 27 2008 at 20:33:02 GMT)
addicts FTW xD
Stephen K said: (Nov 28 2008 at 13:44:51 GMT)
Im doing multimedia in college at the moment and last year I did a small project for my media analisis module.
I sent all my steam friend a small questionare and the results from just 150 people were amazing.
I class myself as an addict but when you read above
"the clinic has changed its treatment programme for gamers to focus more on developing activity-based social and communications skills to help them rejoin society"
This is just another facet of society. In other parts of the world this wouldnt even make them bat an eye lid. Some people still get on with normal lives while suffering from far worse addictions than gaming.
People start to classify it as "addictive" when it starts to impact on what they deem "normal life" but I say screw that tbh.
Through multimedia Ive learned to edit video game footage, create artwork, programme etc. and every single person in the course brings their own interests to the table. If gaming is your thing just go with it. Get creative
Filtertip said: (Nov 28 2008 at 14:24:01 GMT)
if 4 hours a day is addiction then boy do MANY of us have problems lol.
Stephen K said: (Nov 28 2008 at 15:32:14 GMT)
Amen :/
.Icarus. said: (Nov 28 2008 at 19:10:41 GMT)
Agreed, I have been addicted to climbing gaming reading and many other things, i'm just very surprised that they have had a break though and realised the gaming addicts they treat are just like any other addict..
Davros... said: (Nov 30 2008 at 16:16:18 GMT)
tbh Keith looks like he might have had a few real chemical addictions...... There might be another reason why he does not think its a real addiction. WoW is a very clever bit of social engineering on the other hand FPS whores I think are adrenalin junkys of a sort.
noobcatt said: (Dec 01 2008 at 12:58:23 GMT)
i WAS addicted. Now i realise that gaming is fun but if you play it to much then it is hopeless :)
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