The first clinic for teenage gaming addicts
THE NHS has launched the first specialist clinic to help children whose lives are being ruined by video games.
Teenagers addicted to gaming will get one-to- one therapy from psychiatrists either in person at the clinic or via Skype.
Their parents will also be offered advice on managing their child’s addiction and reducing the time they spend online.
The gaming addiction service will open at the same time as 14 new gambling addiction clinics, including one for children.
Announcing the new London clinic, NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens said: ‘This new service is a response to an emerging problem, part of the increasing pressures that children and young people are exposed to these days.
‘However, the NHS should not be left to pick up the pieces. Gambling and internet firms have a responsibility to their users as well as their shareholders and should do their utmost to prevent rather than cash in on obsessive or harmful behaviour.’
Growing numbers of children are compulsive internet users, with addiction to violent games such as Fortnite a big concern.
Last year the parents of a nine-year-old girl who became addicted to Fortnite told of their horror at learning she had been secretly staying up all night on her Xbox.
As her mother and father slept, the primary school pupil became so immersed in
‘A problem that is not going to go away’
the violent online world that she would wet herself rather than take a toilet break.
The World Health Organisation now recognises ‘gaming disorder’ as a mental health condition. Symptoms include lack of control over gaming and placing it as a priority at the expense of other things, including relationships, social life and studying.
Claire Murdoch, NHS national mental health director, said: ‘Compulsive gaming and social media and internet addiction is a problem that is not going to go away.
‘Tech giants need to recognise the impact that products which encourage persistent use have on young people and start taking their responsibilities seriously too.’
The Centre for Internet and Gaming Disorders will be headed by Dr Henrietta BowdenJones, who said: ‘Gaming disorder is not a mental illness to be taken lightly.’
The new centre will be based at the National Centre for Behavioural Addictions in London, which also hosts a service for betting addicts.
Professor Mark Griffiths, from Nottingham Trent University, who has been researching video game addiction for 30 years, said that while there were some ‘horror’ stories, serious cases remained rare.
‘Parents write to me concerned their children are addicts, when they play three or four hours a day, but while they may have a problem, it is not true addiction,’ he added.
‘For an addict, video gaming would be the single most important thing in their life at the expense of everything else. They get withdrawal symptoms if they can’t play. It is similar to drug or alcohol addiction.’