Addicted to games, child misses school for a year

London - The teenager's confidence was lost and he had to be admitted to hospital

A London mother fought for three years to get the NHS to recognise internet game addiction as disorder after her 15-year-old son got hooked on to the trend and missed school for a year.
Kendal Parmar's son was a talented sportsman and academically gifted until his obsession for internet gaming tore his life apart.
The captain of his county rugby and cricket teams, he was so addicted to online gaming that he was unable to attend classes for a year and confined himself to his north London
The teenager's confidence was lost and he had to be admitted to hospital for eight weeks for impaired ability to function. He was prescribed Vitamin D tablets to reverse the effects of months without sunlight.
She decided to fight for her son as well as several other children suffering from adverse effects of online gaming and demanded NHS to recognise internet gaming as a treatable condition.
Finally, Parmar's pleas were heard and the World Health Organisation (WHO) classified internet gaming as an official mental health disorder earlier this year. The move comes as a breakthrough for Parmar who demanded that children be treated for gaming addiction without having to pay about £350 a session for private therapy.
"Every moment he's awake, he wants to be on a game. There is no outside world. It has become all-consuming. The biggest effect on our family is the isolation from us all. He is estranged within our own house. We have lost him...although we know he is in there," Daily Mail quoted the mother-of-five as saying in The Telegraph.  
Pamar said internet gaming is a 'silent addiction' as it is not considered as dangerous as does drug or alcohol addiction. However, recent study showed four per cent of youngsters are clinically at risk of internet addiction.
Parmar, who runs a company which helps empower employees through 'identity management' development, said she sits with her son when he is playing on Twitch, Amazon's live streaming video platform, to try to understand his addiction.
According to the worried mother, her son is attracted to the sociability of gaming as it allows one to play with lots of other people, as well as the buzz when he achieves in the virtual world.
Terming the addiction worse, Parmar said whenever she tries to hide her son's gaming devices to help him get rid of gaming addiction, he acts aggressively.