China opens game-addiction clinic
 

Facility uses electroshock, psychotherapy to treat gamers whose long hours online affect their physical and mental health.

By Tor Thorsen, GameSpot.


Most gamers know how time-consuming a quality massively multiplayer online role-playing game can be. However, for some, playing an MMORPG can become a major habit that scuttles social relationships, wrecks workout schedules, and prevents one from leaving the house for on hours on end.

While the debate still rages in the West on whether or not habitual gamers are genuine addicts, China is moving ahead to address what it sees as a growing problem. According to the Associated Press, the Chinese government has opened the country's first clinic for "Internet addiction." Sporting two dozen nurses and doctors, the facility treats an undisclosed number of patients, mainly in their teens and early 20s.

"All the children here have left school because they are playing games or are in chat rooms every day," clinic director Dr. Tao Ran told the AP. "They are suffering from depression, nervousness, fear, an unwillingness to interact with others, panic, and agitation. They also have sleep disorders, the shakes, and numbness in their hands." Weight loss was another reported symptom.

The AP article quoted several gamers' recollections of their online habit. "In school I didn't pay attention when teachers were talking," said one 20-year-old ward. "All I could do was think about playing the next game. Playing made me happy. I forgot my problems."

The article only identified one addiction-prone game by name: Blizzard Entertainment's 1996 PC RPG Diablo. However, it did say teens were the ones who most often developed addiction-like habits while playing games. The article said older patients were more often overusing chat rooms to talk with "members of the opposite sex."

Dr. Tao told the paper that he estimates of China's 100-million-plus Internet users, 2.5 million are what he considers Internet addicts. His treatment regimen for patients at the facility includes therapy sessions, medication, acupuncture, athletic activities, and electrical shocks to pressure points, according to the AP.

hahahahaha. why am i not surprised? chinese people believe that anything other than studying is a waste of time, well, for teens anyways. but i am often skeptical about real motive behind somethings that the chinese government does. my question is, exactly how do they treat these people?

Firing squads.

Huh. Well, I know one thing, they aren't concerned for the patients. They're probably running insane tests on them, and I would'nt be surprised if one of the rehab patients was found dead.
Diablo? Have they played tetris? And just think of how much better off those people would be still on internet. wow. At least they'd die doing something they liked... not running laps in a smelly, cramped, building.

If this was the case, the somethingawful forums would disappear.

How about you go learn how to read first before you said it's a waste of time.

And for Atnas, not everyone in the world live off their momy and dady. People actually work for a living when they are teens. You can't create food with photoshop. WOW such a shocker hu?

I'm just saying, that in china, there's something called the 'iron rice bowl'. Even if they do treat you like shit, you still get somewhat of a safety net, right? I'm surprised they actually did anything though. But my guess would be to keep them off of the internet so they couldn't say,' china sucks balls' without the government having the chance to shoot them in the ear a couple of times.

Sad, that people get addicted to video games.

I have no idea what you are talking about, wth is 'iron rice bowl' and safety net. Teenages are the future of any country, what is the point of having 2 billion people when they are unproductive.

Just something on the side, Chinese internet is already censor by the government.

When I read what you typed then what your sig says, I lol'd.

I'm going on one hr sleep.

I'm done.

Do what they did to the people at Tiananmen Square.


:Postal: ^^



Edit: This reminds me of a joke.


What do Chinese college students do on weekends?


Get tanked in Tiananmen Square. :)

ahaha, funny. Either that or I really need sleep.

It was funny, but still get some sleep. :)

Food.

Makes for a hell of a bar fight. EL OH EL.

That's interesting like peach-mango coke.

I blame World of Warcraft for a lot of the recent cases, but Everquest and Lineage caused a lot of problems in Asia as well. I mean, they KILL over MMORPG loot over there.