You Can Go To Rehab For Gaming Addiction Now

If you have a video game addiction, you could find yourself in rehab, with some rehab centers opening their doors to gamers.

Australian rehab center Teen Challenge has extended its drug and alcohol services to those with gaming addictions, with patients being admitted its Kyabram centre.

"We've had several guys come into the program and successfully finish who were spending 18 hours a day playing World of Warcraft," Teen Challenge program director David Hunter told the Herald Sun.

"We had a guy who was just about finished with uni and threw it all away and became suicidal because he'd been playing this game for endless hours.”

"He'd lock his doors and wouldn't let friends in and wasn't eating. In the end he lost the game and went out and tried to throw himself in front of a tram."

Specialist clinical psychologist Anthony Cichello said distraught parents have been bringing their teenagers to his practice for gaming addiction, and are "totally at a loss as to what to do".

While the majority of his patients are in their teens, he says he’s had patients ranging to their 30’s. “I've had parents bring 15-year-olds to see me. Their school grades have dived (and) they're sleep-deprived because they have to get up in the middle of the night to play against other players based in the United States and Europe."

[Herald Sun]