C O L U M N S

By Paddy Maguire

Ninety percent of the young people who seek treatment for compulsive computer gaming are not addicted, research says.

The Smith and Jones Centre in Amsterdam, has treated hundreds of young gamers since 2006. But the clinic is changing its treatment as it realises that compulsive gaming is a social rather than a psychological problem.

The clinic has had very high success rate of treating people who also show other addictive behaviours such as drug taking and excessive drinking, said Bakker, a psychologist. But this kind of cross-addiction affects only 10 percent of gamers. For the other 90 percent who may spend four hours a day or more playing games, the clinic doctors no longer think addiction counselling is the way to treat these patients. These patients, especially 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 an addiction. What many of these kids need is their parents and their school teachers - this is a social problem," he further added.

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.

"This gaming problem is a result of the society we live in today," told Bakker. "Eighty percent 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."

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.

For Bakker, the root cause of the huge growth in excessive gaming lies with parents who have failed in their duty of care.

But he is quick to point out that 87 percent 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 they get beyond the parents' control.

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," he says, "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."

One patient, who is 18-year old gamer, being treated at the clinic, he was spending at least 10 hours a day playing until he sought help at the centre.

"I was never helped by my parents or my school. At the clinic I also feel accepted and have come out of myself," says patient.

He kept his gaming problem a secret as much as he could but when he did tell people, he says that no one offered him help.

"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," he further added.

This kind of aggression is not uncommon in young gamers who feel frustrated with their real lives. Besides addiction, aggression and violence form part of the ongoing debate about the influence of gaming on impressionable minds.

Bakker believes 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 source and bring many young people out of the virtual world and back into real life.

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