What School Counsellors Need to Know About Behavioural Addictions

In this course, Dr. Amanda Giordano, Ph.D., LPC, Associate Professor of Counseling, University of Georgia, makes a case for the relevance of addictive behaviours to school counsellors by presenting several startling statistics, such as that pornography exposure begins around 12 and nearly 9 out of 10 teens are involved with gaming. Using the Four Cs model to recognise addiction, Giordano includes gaming, gambling, sex, pornography, shopping, exercise, food, social media, and NSSI as potentially addictive behaviours. She then discusses how we may respond to the various addictions and how we may “get ahead of the curve” by initiating prevention efforts. The latter are likely to revolve around emotion regulation, problems that lie at the base of most behavioural addictions.