Jordi (21 years old) loves video games. So far, everything is normal: many young people his age have the same passion. What happens is that he is not able to manage the attraction that they awaken in him. So much so, that he was voluntarily confined in his room for almost four years, playing almost uninterruptedly. He only came out (thanks to his mother's intervention) to make sporadic visits to the bathroom. He did not step into any other room of the house. For a couple of months now, the situation has seen a slight improvement. The reason? A therapy that he has started at the Parc Taulí hospital in Sabadell, the city where he resides. Little by little, and with a lot of effort, he manages to get out of his room, although there is still a lot of work to do. His recovery is also not helped by the other pathology that he was diagnosed with nine years ago and that governs his life: autism.
It was shortly before the outbreak of the covid pandemic when he began to barricade himself in his room. His mother (Laura, 44 years old) says that at that time he was studying a PCI (professional qualification program for students with special educational needs) and was “quite frustrated” because it did not adapt to what he wanted: Jordi loves it drawing and programming and the PCI that he was taking (and which was closer to his tastes) was more related to the graphic arts, a knowledge that does not motivate him. Added to this circumstance was that she started working, so she began to spend many hours alone at home (her father – Jordi, 45 years old – also works).
“The one who stopped having supervision was when she started to get out of date,” Laura explains to La Vanguardia (she had previously told it on TV3's Planta Baixa program). There were days, when she had a morning shift and she couldn't accompany him to school, that she decided not to go to school. She “she stayed at home playing on the computer.” Until it ended up becoming an absolute addiction.
“He spent more than three and a half years, almost four, without leaving the room,” recalls his mother. She hardly left her, only on rare occasions to go to the bathroom. “I was the one who asked her if she hadn't been there for many hours.”
He was playing almost uninterruptedly for “3 or 4 days in a row.” “He slept maybe an hour and continued playing” – it doesn't happen to him now because he is given an antipsychotic to rest. The situation became unsustainable. So much so that Laura tried, desperate, to intercede. But when she made it difficult for him to access video games, he became uncontrolled, suffering fits of rage that in some cases ended in aggression.
He also paid for it with the objects around him. On our visit to her house, Laura shows us four or five laptops that Jordi has destroyed in all this time. “There are 3,000 euros accumulated here,” she says as she places them one on top of the other on the dining room table under the watchful eye of Jordi, who has left his room and is sitting on the living room sofa.
After one of those outbursts of anger, he was admitted to the crisis unit for adolescents in Taulí, but was released “a few days later” due to his peaceful behavior there. Laura has asked “on several occasions” to admit him to the day hospital: “I am still waiting for them to respond.”
He denounces that “no one” has taught them “how to interact with him” and that they have come to the conclusion that to prevent him from getting out of control, the most sensible thing is to satisfy his needs. She claims that he doesn't usually lose his temper because she always ends up giving in. He is also afraid that “the partial epilepsy” that he suffers from will worsen (in the last four years he has not had seizures) if he suffers frequent outbursts of anger.
All in all, his addiction to video games is still very present, although a couple of months ago the situation has experienced a slight improvement. And all thanks to a therapy that began in the guide group of the mental health service for children and young people at Parc Taulí. “A few days ago they managed to get me to leave the house. “They took him to a bar for breakfast.”
On Mondays, the therapists accompany him to a pavilion to do some sports, and on Wednesdays they meet with him again to set goals to achieve during the week. They always go to look for him at home. “Visits to the patient are made in their community environment, we do not visit them in an office,” says Santi Bertomeu, social educator and member of the guiding team that cares for Jordi. The objective is for him to motivate himself with other activities and thus gradually disengage, “in a non-traumatic way”, from his addiction to screens.
For Jordi - says Bertomeu -, “social networks and video games have become the center of his life, because there he finds everything: social relationships, recognition... they are positive reinforcements that he may not find in his environment. He has his friends there.”
In the end – he continues – “it is about creating a crack in the wall that you have built so that, naturally, you look stronger and more confident and begin to change your routine.”
On Wednesdays Jordi also has group therapy scheduled at the hospital (outside the guide group, so they don't go to his house to look for him) with other people with autism. “The problem is that he does not motivate him and he has stopped coming,” says Laura.
That is one of the issues that the guide group tries to influence. In Monday's activity, he coincides with other people who are also present in Wednesday's group therapy. “Once you have created social bonds on Mondays, it will be easier for you to go to group therapy. Otherwise it is very difficult, it is going into the unknown for them,” adds Bertomeu.
In September, Jordi plans to start a course at the Joso school, in comics and visual arts. And the guide group aims to pave the way for you. “Among other things, we need him to be able to tolerate being in a classroom with other people, so we are going to look for a class where he can face, before starting the course, something that he has not experienced in a long time.” The idea – underlines Bertomeu – “is to work with him to see how he can end up linked to these activities: we accompany him while we help him build his life project, making him the protagonist.”
The task, however, is capital. Francesca Fernández, director of the Xalest special education school, where Jordi attended all of his ESO, knows this well, although he did not graduate. It is also the center where he studied the PCI. “It was very difficult for us to have consistency,” she remembers. They even went to pick him up at home when he didn't show up for class.
Beyond the course at the Joso school, Fernández knows that he would like to one day take an intermediate degree in computer programming. But he doesn't see him ready. Leaving aside the fact that it is necessary to have passed the PCI to gain access (this is not his case), he defends that “he has not had the ability to maintain continuity or consistency in anything for a long time.” “I wanted to, but he wasn't capable,” he argues.
Like Laura – whom she defines as “a courageous mother” – she thinks that Jordi (who is the oldest of three siblings) “must be hospitalized for as long as necessary because he has a very unhealthy and serious dependence on screens.”
He knows about the monitoring they are doing on him in Taulí, but understands that “it is insufficient” for his case. That is why he asks that the different administrations “help more” the family: “They need a lot of support.” And not only because of Jordi. The middle of the three brothers – Marc, 20 years old – is diagnosed with Asperger's, although he likes to study and is about to obtain a higher degree in chemistry. The little one – Sergi, 18 years old – “is luckily fine,” Laura emphasizes.
He maintains that he does not receive any financial aid for his son. She had received - she says - a payment for having dependent minors with some type of disability (Jordi has 65% recognized), but she no longer receives it as she is of legal age. However, she is trying to access this help again: “Although he is no longer a minor, due to the degree of disability he has, it could be granted to him.” She is also arranging access to the free pharmacy.
Talking to her, one gets the feeling that she tries to relativize what happens to her in order to move forward. And he confirms it to us: “It is survival.” The energy she transmits is admirable. He affirms, however, that he is also undergoing treatment to be able to cope with everything he has to live through: “I have all kinds of days.” One of the few things he asks for is that her son be accepted back into a PCI. Due to his age, he is in principle banned from access.
“We cannot pay for private schools to continue developing their abilities.” He affirms that they will try to pay for the drawing school that he wants to go to in September, which costs about 140 euros per month for two classes per week. “We will make an effort,” she maintains, although she emphasizes that she is a mileurista and her husband will be out of work in a month.
