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By Iffath FathimaFor those in the know, December 7 is a red letter day. It’s rumoured that PlayerUnknown’s Battleground (PUBG – pronounced pubji), an online multiplayer shooting game, will be available on Sony Playstation 4 platform, much to the delight of its nearly 400 million gaming fans. The game was so far available only on mobile, PC and Xbox platforms.Bengaluru has its fair share of loyals addicted to it. But here is a sobering statistic. About 120 cases of “Mental Health Condition” have been reported at the Services for Healthy Use of Technology (SHUT) clinic of National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (Nimhans), due to PUBG addiction in the last three months. Doctors are alarmed at young people being brought in everyday with symptoms of sleep deprivation, loss of interest in real life, playing truant at school and college, drop in grades and aggression when asked to discontinue with the game.The combat game starts with 100 players diving from an aeroplane on to an island. Once they land, they must go into the houses or different places on the island and pick up arms and ammunitions, medicines and other items they will need for combat. Players have access to bikes, cars and boats to reach out to different places on the island to loot houses and use it as a hiding place to kill opponents. The task set out for the players is to shoot all the opponents and the last person standing among the 100 players is the winner.According to Dr Manoj Sharma, Professor of Clinical Psychology at SHUT clinic, the game was introduced about eight months back in India. “Initially, in the first three months, we reported only three to five cases in a month. But after the recent tournament which was conducted in Bengaluru in the month of September, the cases have seen an increase. We have had 40 cases a month.”The intensely competitive nature of the game keeps the players hooked to it for hours and soon it takes over their life. Doctors say that after playing continuously for eight hours, the game dominates every aspect of the players’ life.Recently a 19-year-old engineering student was brought into the clinic by his parents. The boy would start playing the game after midnight till 4.00 am. According to the doctors, the boy would prefer to play in the night because he would find more international players at that time to compete with. “Due to this, his sleep pattern was disturbed. He would wake up at 12 noon and start playing the game for eight hours again. This started affecting his college attendance. He had no other friends other than the gamers with whom he competed every night.”When his parents wanted to take his phone away, he became aggressive and physically violent. “When the boy came to us, he was extremely aggressive. His relationship with his parents was broken. He accused his parents of interfering in his life and not letting him play the game. Instead of asking him to completely give up gaming, we made a bargain that he should resume college and that he would be allowed to play in the evening, than at midnight. We slowly started working on changing his sleeping patterns and asked his parents to engage with him in conversations, go out with him and keep him occupied so that he would not be tempted to pick up the mobile to play the game,” said Dr Sharma.The boy was also advised simple exercises like blinking 10 times after a match, rotating his wrists and moving his neck from left to right. This helped to relieve some of the physical stress caused by continuous engagement with the game.In another case, an academically bright and creative 15-year-old was brought in to the clinic as he was spending 10 to 12 hours a day on PUBG. He said the excessive use of games gave him a feeling of well-being and helped him manage his boredom, academic decline and personal problems. His eating patterns became very irregular and his personal hygiene took a hit. Doctors say he would not bathe for four days at a stretch. He was administered an internet addiction test with questions like ‘How often do you find that you stay online longer than you intended? How often do you lose sleep due to late night log-in?’ On the test which is administered to evaluate the severity of the addiction, the teen scored a value which pointed to a high addiction. “We used motivation enhancement therapy to minimize the dysfunction due to excessive use of games and educated him to reduce the dysfunctions (sleep disturbance, irregular eating habits and drop in academic grades) due to excessive use of technology. He was told about sleep hygiene and time management techniques and was advised to practise these as a home assignment, said Dr Sharma.In another case, a 17-year- old boy who was one of the first three rank holders in school, started skipping classes and ended up not clearing his exams due to the PUBG gaming addiction. He then stopped going to school and his interactions with his parents became almost nil. “The boy was given the same kind of treatment like in the other cases, but we focussed more on getting him back to academics. This has helped him,’ says Dr Sharma.Doctors say gaming addicts suffer from a condition called Mental Health Condition. There is no quick fix to this and the treatment calls for time and patience. “Sometimes parents end up getting affected too, seeing their kids lose interest in their life. We treat parents too, in such cases,” adds Dr. Sharma.Doctors also say that children are not just playing games day and night but also considering a career in gaming. “Some say they play long hours so that they can be great players and make a lot of money.”PUBG is not the first game to create addicts out of gamers. Earlier, games like Dota 2, Counter Strike and Fortnite had the same effect on players.