11 July 2024

Professor Henrietta Bowden-Jones has featured in an article for The Observer (7 July 2024), speaking about the scale of gaming addiction in the UK.

In 2019, she spearheaded the establishment of the National Centre for Gaming Disorders, the UK’s first facility dedicated to treating gaming addiction.

Since opening, the centre has been overwhelmed with referrals, mostly from patients who are young and male.

The pandemic shone a light on this issue, with lockdown creating the environment for “addictive behaviours to flourish”. Despite the challenges, the centre is seeing positive outcomes.

Prof Bowden-Jones talks about the specialist treatment approach, which unlike other addiction services, the goal is not to eliminate gaming entirely.

Treatment plans often involve family therapy, and they look to understand the underlying causes, which often includes factors such as escapism and social connectivity.

The article reads:

“I am sometimes seeing a drive and compulsion to use gaming as a saviour. Many of them hate their daily reality, many of them cannot wait to grow up. Many of them are very anxious about the marriage or mental health of their parents.

"It just shows you how multifactorial addiction is, and how gaming disorder is just one more manifestation of things going wrong.”

Read the full article at this link.

To find more information, visit: The National Centre for Gaming Disorders (cnwl.nhs.uk)