A sizeable percentage of young people who play video games--almost one in ten--may resonate with the cry of help we hear in this Sunday's psalm: "You who relieve me when I am in distress; have pity on me, and hear my prayer!" A new study suggests that 8.5 percent of young video game players exhibit signs of addiction to gaming.

Douglas A. Gentile, a developmental psychologist and an assistant professor at Iowa State University in Ames, said the study is the first to document the prevalence of video game addiction using a nationally representative sample of children and adolescents.

"What's most concerning to me is really the total percentage, just the vast number of kids that are having real problems in their lives because they play games, and they may not know how to stop it," said Gentile, whose study appears in the May edition of Psychological Science.

Experts say that when playing video games becomes compulsive and results in kids skipping school or not playing with friends it could signal other mental health problems.

"What you usually find with these kids is this [video game compulsion] is just the tip of the iceberg," said Dr. Michael Brody, a psychiatrist in private practice in Potomac, Maryland and chairman of the media committee of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. "Underneath you usually find a lot of depression and anxiety."

Source: An article by Karen Pallarito for HealthDay Reporter