Ninety per cent of the young people who seek treatment for compulsive computer gaming are not addicted.
So says Keith Bakker the founder and head of Europe's first and only clinic to treat gaming addicts.
Using traditional abstinence-based treatment models the clinic has had very high success rates treating people who also show other addictive behaviours such as drug taking and excessive drinking.
But the clinic is changing its treatment as it realises that compulsive gaming is a social rather than a psychological problem.
In response the clinic has changed its treatment programme for gamers to focus more on developing activity-based social and communications skills to help them rejoin society.
Mr Bakker believes that if there was more commitment from parents and other care givers to listen to what their children are saying then these issues of isolation and frustration could be dealt with at source and bring many young people out of the virtual world and back into real life.
