Compulsive gaming a social problem, not a medical one

Keith Bakker is the founder and head of the first and only clinic that treats video game addiction in Europe so he should know what he’s talking about when he says most “videogame-addicted” gamers aren’t actually addicts.

Keith Bakker is the founder and head of the first and only clinic that treats video game addiction in Europe so he should know what he’s talking about when he says most “videogame-addicted” gamers aren’t actually addicts.

According to him, using the conventional abstinence-based treatments for drug or alcohol dependencies only affects about 10 percent of his patients whereas ordinarily, the success rate should be much higher.

He and his clinic have come to the conclusion that the compulsive gaming is a social rather than a psychological problem. As such, they now focus treatments involving activity-based social and communication skills to help his patients rejoin society.

Bakker mentioned to the BBC during an interview,

This gaming problem is a result of the society we live in today. Eighty per cent 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.

He also called for more commitment from parents and other care givers to help draw young people back from the virtual world and into the real one by genuinely listening to what they have to say.

“In most cases of compulsive gaming, it is not addiction and in that case, the solution lies elsewhere,” he said, noting that by insisting to call it an addiction, we take away the element of choice from the equation.

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Via BBC News