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posted by martyb on Monday June 18 2018, @05:16PM   Printer-friendly
from the doritos-and-mountain-dew-brain dept.

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"


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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 18 2018, @08:10PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 18 2018, @08:10PM (#694682)

    Maybe burying your face in your phone is just a symptom of a different issue. Did anyone eve consider that?
    I know when I'm forced to interact with people on family events, I frequently bury my face in my phone. Because let's face it.. Sometimes you'd just rather be somewhere else, rather than the place you're stuck at currently for whatever reason! I frequently get complaints that I should be present in the here-and-now, rather than inside my mind, or a book, or a screen.

    Previously at social events, you were expected to be civil and to interact with others for the entire duration of your presence. Now with the rise of powerful handheld information display and communication devices, we finally have excuses to not talk to people standing right in front of us. It's heaven for us introverts! And if anyone calls us out on it, we can simply blame it on addiction to social media. So convenient!

    Obviously the above is meant to be tongue-in-cheek. But there's a very real kernel of truth in there. There's a whole world of information literally at my fingertips. Most of it is vastly more interesting than talking to most people, excepted some rare individuals. Can we honestly blame people for tuning out? Should we expect people to be social when they don't want to? Why should we all constantly force ourselves to fit in and be social. Why can't we all just live and let live?

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 19 2018, @06:09AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 19 2018, @06:09AM (#694852)

    I know when I'm forced to interact with people on family events

    You're not. If you're an adult, you're not forced to do any such thing. I just don't go to such events.