Bengaluru hospital registers first case of texting addiction

A hospital in Bengaluru has registered its first case of texting addiction.

With the growth of mobile usage in India, Bengaluru based National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences or NIMHANS has registered the first case of texting addiction of a 19-year-old.

The 19-year-old patient was spending 8-10 hours on the phone responding to an average of 200 texts every day. The addiction was identified at the service for healthy use of technology or SHUT clinic when the patient showed an inability to stay away from her mobile phone.

Dr Manoj Kumar Sharma, Co-ordinator of SHUT Clinic, NIMHANS said that the patient used to develop psychological problems such as irritability, anger whenever she was asked to restrain herself from texting.

The doctor said that due to the excessive texting habit the girl was not taking out time for social activities and texting had become the first and the foremost thing in her life.

The clinic assessed the impact of the texting behaviour on the girl and gave her a feedback that texting was becoming a compulsive behaviour and the excessive texting was having an adverse impact on her activities.

The doctor further said that initially,the girl was not willing for the treatmenthowever later the clinic convinced.

After conducting clinical interviews, NIMHANS has startedworking on the treatment of the teenager.

The treatment involves making the patient face the reality of her situation and then slowly wean her away from her mobile phone.

Though this is the first registered case, experts feel that there are many serious ramifications of early exposure to technology. A recent research had shown that an average young adult sends around 110 text messages every day.

Swarnalath Iyer, Psychologist who is actively involved in counselling students says that most youngsters use mobile phone as a comforter to counter the social anxiety that they face in the real world.