Adayu Opens Behavioral Addiction Care Pathway in Gurugram
Adayu, the psychiatry and deaddiction hospital of Fortis Healthcare, has opened a Behavioural Addiction Clinic at its Sector 38 facility in Gurugram, giving the city a dedicated outpatient pathway for gaming, gambling and problematic digital media use. The clinic operates from 9:00 AM to 10:00 PM, Monday through Saturday, and is designed to combine psychiatric and psychological assessment with individualized treatment planning.
The new service is aimed at behaviors that may look ordinary from the outside but begin to erode daily functioning. Gaming sessions that crowd out sleep, gambling that drains finances, and compulsive scrolling or social media use that interferes with work, school, or relationships can all become clinical problems when control is lost. In that setting, the key question is not how often the behavior occurs, but whether it has become difficult to stop and whether it is reshaping everyday life.
Why Digital Overuse Can Become a Clinical Disorder
The clinic’s launch sits squarely within the framework used by the World Health Organization’s ICD-11, which recognizes gaming disorder and gambling disorder as disorders due to addictive behaviours. Clinical recognition matters because these conditions are not simply habits with poor reputation. They can involve compulsive engagement, reduced self-regulation, and continued behavior despite clear harm.
Problematic digital use can occupy the same neurobehavioral space when it starts to narrow attention, disrupt circadian rhythm, and pull people away from social and occupational roles. Sleep loss is often one of the first downstream effects, and once sleep is disturbed, emotional regulation worsens, irritability rises, and the cycle can intensify. Families often see the spillover before the patient does: withdrawn routines, missed obligations, secrecy about screen time or spending, and a growing inability to disengage.
Adayu’s model is built around that clinical reality. The service is not positioned as a screen-time complaint line. It is a structured behavioral health clinic where concern about digital behavior can be translated into a psychiatric evaluation, a functional assessment, and a treatment plan proportionate to severity.
Multidisciplinary Assessment and Family Support
Dr Bishnu Panigrahi, Group Head for Medical Strategy and Operations at Fortis Healthcare, framed the clinic around careful assessment, personalized care, and early intervention. In practice, those elements matter because behavioral addictions rarely present in isolation. Patients may arrive with anxiety, depression, sleep disturbance, irritability, academic decline, relationship conflict, or financial strain, and treatment has to account for the whole pattern rather than one visible symptom.
The clinic will offer psychiatric and psychological assessments, multidisciplinary treatment, individual therapy, family therapy where appropriate, and personalized lifestyle guidance. That mix reflects the way these disorders are managed in real outpatient settings. Medication is not the centerpiece for every patient, and some cases may be handled through psychotherapy, behavioral restructuring, and family-based support. Others may require more intensive psychiatric intervention when compulsive behavior is paired with broader mental health concerns.
Sleep disruption is often the first domino to fall.
Family involvement may be especially important when a young person is involved. Parents and caregivers are often the first to notice a change in functioning, even if they cannot yet explain it as a disorder. Dr Samir Parikh, Chairperson of the Fortis National Mental Health Program and Adayu, stressed that behavioral concerns should be judged by their impact on daily life rather than the frequency of gaming or digital activity alone. That distinction helps separate high engagement from illness and reduces the chance that a clinically significant problem is dismissed as a harmless phase.
What the Clinic May Change for Patients in Gurugram
A dedicated clinic can shorten the path from concern to evaluation. When a service is clearly named and locally available, patients and families do not have to frame the problem as a general psychiatric issue or wait until the behavior has escalated into crisis. Access matters because behavioral addictions are often hidden for months or years, especially when the individual is otherwise functioning in school or at work while gradually losing control at home.
The Gurugram clinic also gives clinicians a setting to look for patterns that often accompany behavioral addiction: chronic sleep deprivation, social withdrawal, irritability when access is restricted, neglect of hygiene or meals, and mounting distress when limits are imposed. Those features can guide the intensity of care. They can also help determine whether the person is dealing with gaming disorder, gambling disorder, another addictive behavior, or a broader psychiatric condition that is using digital activity as a coping mechanism.
The practical value of the launch lies in that specificity. A person who is simply spending many hours online does not automatically meet criteria for addiction. A patient who cannot reduce use despite losing sleep, damaging relationships, or impairing education or work requires a different response. The clinic is built to make that distinction through direct clinical assessment rather than judgment by appearance alone.
A Behavioral Health Service Built Around Daily Function
Adayu’s new clinic aims to improve access to behavioral mental healthcare in Gurugram by combining evaluation, tailored treatment, and family involvement where needed. The clinical focus is functional impairment: whether a behavior is interfering with sleep, relationships, education, work, or emotional well-being.
For patients and families, that focus is useful because it turns a vague concern into an actionable care plan. It also reduces the common delay that occurs when people wait for visible collapse before seeking help. By the time a compulsive behavior dominates finances, grades, or family life, treatment often becomes more complicated.
This launch adds a dedicated outpatient option for a problem that is becoming harder to ignore in everyday practice. The challenge now is less about recognizing that behavioral addiction exists and more about identifying which patients need structured care, which need family-supported intervention, and which need longer-term psychiatric follow-up to regain control of daily life.