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The World Health Organization (WHO) will officially classify "gaming disorder" as a mental health condition:
The World Health Organization is set to announce "gaming disorder" as a new mental health condition to be included in the 11th edition of its International Classification of Diseases, set to release Monday.
"I'm not creating a precedent," said Dr. Vladimir Poznyak, a member of WHO's Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse, which proposed the new diagnosis to WHO's decision-making body, the World Health Assembly. Instead, he said, WHO has followed "the trends, the developments, which have taken place in populations and in the professional field."
However, not all psychologists agree that gaming disorder is worthy of inclusion in the International Classification of Diseases, known as the ICD.
What are the characteristics of gaming disorder?
"One is that the gaming behavior takes precedence over other activities to the extent that other activities are taken to the periphery," he said. The second feature is "impaired control of these behaviors," Poznyak said. "Even when the negative consequences occur, this behavior continues or escalates." A diagnosis of gaming disorder, then, means that a "persistent or recurrent" behavior pattern of "sufficient severity" has emerged, according to the ICD. A third feature is that the condition leads to significant distress and impairment in personal, family, social, educational or occupational functioning, Poznyak said. The impact is real, he said, and may include "disturbed sleep patterns, like diet problems, like a deficiency in the physical activity."
Overall, the main characteristics are "very similar" to the diagnostic features of substance use disorders and gambling disorder, he said. Gambling disorder "is another category of clinical conditions which are not associated with a psychoactive substance use but at the same time being considered as addictive as addictions."
Also at NYT.
Previously: World Health Organization Will Recognize "Gaming Disorder"
(Score: 5, Interesting) by edIII on Monday June 18 2018, @08:05PM (5 children)
An interesting question. I think there are two people being conflated here:
1) A gamer. Somebody who actively chooses video games, and those genres of entertainment (Twitch), versus other past times that involve "IRL", people, and the outdoors.
2) People addicted to gaming to the extent their infant child dies horribly in the same room with them. Imagine the scene from Trainspotting when the woman finds the dead baby, except in this case, the gamers didn't even bother to check what the smell was (true story).
The real distinction here is whether or not there is:
I knew somebody that was impairing their personal life (girlfriend leaving over MMO), but was otherwise doing just fine with work and education. Social did decline a bit because it was difficult for us to get him involved as much in our activities, but it was still a choice. He had new friends online that he was grinding with. I want to say this was Everquest?
I think there are people that just choose to spend their free time playing video games. That's okay too. Forgot where I heard it, but adults in America are becoming more and more isolated anyways. Perhaps it's just part of a larger issue? Maybe excessive time spend playing video games in indicative of a need for some therapy?
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Monday June 18 2018, @08:13PM
It helps when you are drenched and caked in your own bodily emissions. Submersed in unreality.
https://www.hardocp.com/news/2018/06/10/girl_9_in_rehab_after_getting_so_addicted_to_fortnite_she_wet_herself [hardocp.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday June 18 2018, @08:19PM
Stop it! I don't come here for well reasoned responses. I want ill-informed rants.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Monday June 18 2018, @08:35PM
Not necessarily. Rather, if you continue to spend excessive time after you noticed (or someone else noticed to you) that you do, then you need therapy.
Case in point: At some point in time, I was playing some free-to-play online game excessively. But when I noticed that I'm putting more time in than is healthy for me, I stopped playing it, and had no trouble to do so. Which demonstrates that despite excessive playing, I wasn't addicted.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Touché) by acid andy on Monday June 18 2018, @11:25PM
Man. She could at least have left him over the phone!
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday June 19 2018, @03:28AM
Which doesn't have any clear scientific definition. It is purposefully left for interpretation by both the doctor and patient. It is slightly more sophisticated way of saying "it is bad". It is designed to open 1 door: how to sell you something medication.
But my personal beef is that in a time when family doesn't mean jack-shit, and we know gamers are primarily men, what measures are there in defining this "disorder" that take into account a man going through divorce and taking stress out through video games? How easy it is to turn a stressful marriage being coped with video games into stressful marriage because of video games?