Last week, the Service for Healthy Use of Technology (SHUT) clinic at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) in Bangalore, India, treated a 26-year-old man who said he had been addicted to Netflix for more than six months. His compulsive habit caused fatigue, eye strain, and irregular sleeping cycles.

Dr. Manoj Kumar Sharma, the head of the SHUT clinic said that binge-watching helped the patient forget his worries while he was unemployed for a long period of time:

Whenever his family pressurized him to earn a living, or when he saw his friends doing well, he would watch the shows on offer continuously. It was a method of escapism. He could forget about his problems, and he derived immense pleasure from it.

Clearly, many people spend a lot of time on Netflix, as it accounts for 15 percent of downstream traffic of the Internet. The company’s own data suggests that an average user spends 50 minutes per day on the service. Plenty of people have written about how Netflix can affect one’s mental health.

If you’re worried about falling into the same trap, Dr. Sharma recommends avoiding the use of technology as a coping mechanism. But as some of us can attest, that’s easier said than done.

Netflix has taken too few steps in the past to address the addiction problem. It’d be good to see the company introduce some methods to help users keep their viewing sessions in check.