Shanghai will launch a welfare program called "e Road Sunshine-Shanghai Teenager Network Addiction Comprehensive Treatment and Training Camp" on August 17 to provide treatment solutions to Internet addicted teenagers.
The organizer of the program has told local media that if everything goes smoothly, they will set up a special hospital to treat the addicted group within this year.
During the 10-day event, 40 Internet addicted young people will be given joint diagnoses by top psychologists, psychological consultants and network engineers from around the city. Different from other summer camps for curing Internet addiction, this training program reportedly focuses on more than just curing the patients and it will instead explore a systematic therapy solution for the problem of teenage Internet addiction.
Cai Zhong, director of the Shanghai Community Teenager Affairs Office, says that the city will set up a three-tiered platform to cure Internet addiction within the year to offer different solutions to patients of network addiction according to the degree of their addiction. Patients with basic, low-level addictions are suggested to call the 12355 service line and consult for a solution, medium level patients should ask for help from volunteer psychological consultants available at the Teenager Affairs Office, and the most serious ones should go to the special hospital for a treatment.