Video Game Addicts on the Rise

(September 02, 2006) -- A growing trend of a full-blown addiction to computer games is causing trouble for people of all stations in life.

The Boston Globe Saturday said these online players are seeking help for their addiction. Maressa Hecht Orzack, an assistant professor of clinical psychology at Harvard Medical School, said she is receiving five or six calls a day from gamers desperate for help.

The computer games are thought to ignite certain receptors in the brain known to cause addictive behavior.

Fans of video games number in the millions. And every day, the Boston Globe reports, Orzack hears from individuals who have wandered so far into their digital playgrounds they can no longer find the exit.

"I get to see maybe two or three a week," said Orzack, director of the Computer Addiction Study Center at McLean Hospital in Belmont.

Last updated: 09/06

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