The latest in a wave of gaming addiction centers has opened its doors in the UK.
Established in 1974, and located in the English town of Weston-super-Mare, Broadway Lodge has expanded its treatment repertoire to include game addiction, employing a 12-step abstinence program to help patients kick the habit. Group therapy and “therapeutic” tasks such as cleaning and vacuuming are also used in treatment, but apparently baking cookies is not part of the mix.
The center’s Chief Executive Brian Dudley tells the Telegraph that he thinks game addiction is a widespread problem, “I would stick my neck out and say between five and ten per cent of parents or partners would say they know of someone addicted to an online game.”
Broadway Lodge Counselor Peter Smith added:
It's not unusual for people to get so obsessed with online gaming that they forget to eat and drift towards an anorexic and undernourished state. You have a relationship with characters in the game that give you an artificial feeling, created by your body's natural endorphins, when you have killed some monster or solved a problem.
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Re: UK Treatment Center Now Caters to Game Addicts
Re: UK Treatment Center Now Caters to Game Addicts
"....between five and ten per cent of parents or partners would say they know of someone addicted to an online game.”
1) The average person cant find thier bunghole with both hands, they're certainly not qualified to say who's addicted and who's not. Much of my wifes family considers me "addicted to gaming", even though i'm an extremely casual gamer.
2) This "everybody knows somebody" mentality is useless at the outset. In Canada, the rate of people who smoke has dropped to well below 10%, but everybody knows at least somebody who smokes. That does not change the fact that there are very few smokers nowadays.
Re: UK Treatment Center Now Caters to Game Addicts
So you trade having fun for boredom?
Re: UK Treatment Center Now Caters to Game Addicts
Quote :"It's not unusual for people to get so obsessed with online gaming that they forget to eat and drift towards an anorexic and undernourished state."
So....video games cause anorexia nervosa now....(shakes head in utter disbelief)....
Re: UK Treatment Center Now Caters to Game Addicts
yes games give a wonderful sense of escapism, that we can become quite addicted too. that's why i'm playing Max Payne 2 and The last remnant instead doing the 3/4ths unfinished paper due friday.
But any treatement is garunteed failure unless you deal with why the person seems to want to escape to such a degree in the first place.
Also...forgetting lunch (...okay, and breakfast) for till 2pm isn't necesarily addiction, like any book or movie, it might just be that really freaking good (this culprit was Condemned: Criminal Origins).
Re: UK Treatment Center Now Caters to Game Addicts
That's the problem really, one of the first Game Addiction centres set up ended up stating that 90% of the cases coming through their doors were not addicted in the classical sense, but were, in fact, using the game as an escape from real-life problems, and that the solution wasn't addiction treatment, but counselling and communication assistance, often with the entire family of the individual. That's what makes me think this is a blatant search for cash.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7746471.stm
I post that link quite often, but I do think it is important to take notice of what is said in it.
Re: UK Treatment Center Now Caters to Game Addicts
"Besides, if they can afford to pay a monthly fee, we want that money, so it's a great idea to expand our repertoire into whatever the rags are happy to attack, I can even throw in a few fake scary numbers justified by the clause 'I think', which isn't a qualifier in the slightest, just to edge their money towards our pockets...er... I mean people with problems towards our centre."