UK's first games addiction clinic opens

Britain's first ever rehabilitation clinic for cases of video games addiction has been established in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset.

Around 400 patients check in to Broadway Lodge each year for treatment of drugs, alcohol and gambling additions.

However, the clinic has now adopted a gaming rehabilitation scheme developed in the US called the Minnesota Method Twelve-Step Abstinence programme.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, the centre's chief executive Brian Dudley said: ''Obviously this is the very early stages of researching how many youngsters are affected. But I would stick my neck out and say between five and 10% of parents or partners would say they know of someone addicted to an online game.

"You can't simply say to a 23-year-old male 'you should never use the internet again'. It's just not practical. So we go through all the issues surrounding gaming use and ensure there are triggers through which an addict recognises their usage has become a problem."

Government advisor Dr Tanya Byron has long campaigned about the dangers of gaming addiction among young people, including once comparing the compulsion to cocaine or heroin dependency.

Swedish charity the Youth Care Foundation also recently claimed that World Of Warcraft is the "crack cocaine of the computer world" after a 15-year-old boy went into convulsions following a lengthy session playing the game.

Broadway Lodge counsellor Peter Smith said of the problem: ''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.''

However, the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association moved to deny any notions that playing online games can lead to addition.

''Playing video games is becoming increasingly mainstream in the UK and we firmly believe in the positive impact playing games can have," said ELSPA director general Michael Rawlinson.