Screen addiction accounts for 1 in 5 young people seeking help at Projecte Home

Addiction to screens, video games and online gambling was behind 20.8% of requests for help from teenagers and young people last year at Projecte Home, an organization that works to prevent and treat addictions. 

This represents a significant rise from 2021, when these behavioral addictions represented 13% of cases. 

Cannabis addiction remains the number one reason young people seek treatment (58.4%), according to the organization's annual report, presented on Tuesday. 

Projecte Home said that the average age of people being treated has risen from 37 to 44 years in a decade and warned that this showed an increasing delay in the onset for treatment for those living with addiction. 

People who contact Projecte Home for treatment have been consuming or using for an average of more than 17 years. 

The organization attended to 1,486 people in 2022 through addiction care and treatment programs and services carried out at their seven centers in Catalonia. 

The vast majority were men, 82.4%, compared to 17.6% women, figures which the NGO said highlighted the greater difficulties women face in order to access treatment. 

Cocaine and alcohol addiction 

Cocaine use is behind the most requests for treatment, nearly half (46.9%). Alcohol represents 38.4% of cases. It should be borne in mind that some of the people treated consume several drugs and only the main one for which they seek treatment is counted. 

Cocaine and alcohol have been the two main substances leading to requests for help for many years. 

Jaume is one of the people who has been treated at Projecte Home for an addiction to alcohol and cocaine. He is now 58 years old and has been suffering from these addictions for about eight years. 

"I lost everything. I asked for help, and this was a very important step," said Jaume, who took about three years to realize that he was suffering from an addiction. 

After a hospital admission to detox, he arrived at Projecte Home, where he has undergone 22 months of therapy and was discharged from treatment a few weeks ago. 

"Here I learned everything I know in order to overcome alcohol addiction once and for all," Jaume said. "It is a lifelong illness," he added.