Teen Crisis Intervention for Digital Addictions
Teen crisis intervention that is designed to dislodge your teenager from his video games may seem overly dramatic. However, if your teen is obsessed to the point of dropping out of all other activities, is reluctant to join in family activities (hopefully there are some), and has few friends - and those friends are also game obsessed, than you have a type of addiction, or at least an obsession, that has to be dealt with.
“Mardi Allen, psychologist with the state Department of Mental Health, said the issue is about engaging in anything to extremes. Allen has not seen patients with a specific gaming problem in private practice. But it is a part of a problem package patients describe.
“The appeal is there. They get an emotional high, … a sense of pride, an accomplishment,” Allen said. Her concerns are the underlying problems. What else is happening with the child?”
Perhaps the key is just that - a sense of accomplishment.Couldn’t that sense of accomplishment be derived from activities that have real value? In a world where acclaim is given to celebrities who clearly have not earned it and a public school system increasingly bent on discouraging teens from developing a healthy sense of competition - maybe the only “playing field” that has a challenge for teens is the virtual one. And that speaks more to the dereliction of duty by parents and schools than it does about the troubled teenager.
Relevant Tags:crisis intervention, extremes, mental health, obsessed, obsession, teen crisis intervention, teen crisis, troubled teenager
