Odyssey Opens Facility Dedicated to Treating Internet, Video Game Addiction

A facility dedicated exclusively to the treatment of technology-related addiction in young adults has opened in the Northeast.

Greenfield Recovery Center, an Odyssey Behavioral Healthcare property in Leyden, Massachusetts, will treat individuals who compulsively use the Internet, video games, social media, smartphones and other screen-related technology. Programming will focus on establishing a healthy tech-life balance by focusing on life skills and social interactions, combined with therapy.

The new facility, built on 19 acres of private woodlands, adds to Odyssey's portfolio of diverse behavioral health properties, which also cover eating disorders, psychiatric care, addiction. The company now operates nine facilities in seven states.

David Greenfield, PhD, will serve as the facility’s medical director. Greenfield is the founder and chief clinical officer for the Center for Internet and Technology Addiction, as well as an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. In 1999, Greenfield wrote the book “Virtual Addiction,” which discussed the early days of Internet and technology addiction in the U.S.

The opening of Greenfield Recovery Center comes as clinicians are speaking out about mounting evidence of the legitimacy of video game addiction. Frank Greenagel, co-author of the new book “Video Game Addiction 101” recently told Addiction Professional, a sister publication of BHE, that he would like to see clinicians advocate for video game addiction to be added as a disorder in the next update of the DSM, and also seek out training opportunities on the subject.