'Gaming Disorder' Is a Now an Official Medical Condition, According to the WHO
Nearly anywhere you go, it's easy to find children and adults alike transfixed by their phones, and while texting and social media certainly claim a big part of that attention, increasingly it's gaming that's drawing us in.
At the World Health Organization's World Health Assembly on Saturday, member states officially recognized gaming addiction as a modern disease. Last year, the WHO voted to include gaming disorder as an official condition in the draft version of its latest International Classification of Diseases (ICD); the vote finalizes that decision. The WHO's ICD, currently in its 11th edition, serves as the international standard for diagnosing and treating health conditions.
According to Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesperson for the WHO, the move is "based on reviews of available evidence," and reflects general agreement among experts around the world that some people show a "pattern of gaming behavior characterized by impaired control," prioritizing gaming over other daily responsibilities, including attending school or work and keeping social appointments.
According to the WHO experts who analyzed studies on gaming behavior, people's use of gaming is different from their use of the internet, social media, online gambling and online shopping. There isn't sufficient data, they say, to indicate that people's reliance on those is a "behavioral addiction" the way gaming can be.
Previously: World Health Organization Will Recognize "Gaming Disorder"
World Health Organization Officially Lists "Gaming Disorder" in ICD
Why is There a 'Gaming Disorder' but No 'Smartphone Disorder?'
Related: Treatment Centers for Internet Addiction are Popping Up
Burnout is Now an Official Medical Diagnosis, Says the World Health Organization
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RamiK on Thursday May 30 2019, @08:28PM (1 child)
It's an emergency measure to put treatments under medical jurisdiction so to shutdown the reeducation camps kids are being sent to and abused at by their idiotic parents. They did the same thing with obesity to combat all the "nutrition experts" and "diet camps". Once they understand the issue (and have real treatments if required) they'll clean up the medical codes and laws.
Homosexuals, trans and hermaphrodites rights were brought about under similar-yet-reversed circumstances: The medical establishment had to reclassify or remove the different disorders to prevent the abuse, persecution and premature/incorrect gender assignment surgeries doctors were too often making under parental, patients-own or socio-religious pressures. If they could say "one day we'll have a prenatal diagnosis and possibly genetic treatments but we don't want to see 10% of the population persecuted" without causing massive harm, they'd do it.
If you want medical codes to reflect scientific reality, start classifying the religious disorders: There some 80% of the population believing in an imaginary sky father based on zero evidences living among us and are living, eating and killing based on what that figure supposedly has to say in its 2000 years old book...
Overall, humans are a mess and medicine can only try and reduce the harm and pain by promoting the likes of "gaming disorder" and "Religious/LGBT/Intersex rights" to prevent politicization while sorting it all out. If you feel the solution is inadequate, feel free to suggest a better one.
compiling...
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 30 2019, @11:47PM
> If you want medical codes to reflect scientific reality, start classifying the religious disorders: There some 80% of the population believing in an imaginary sky father based on zero evidences living among us and are living, eating and killing based on what that figure supposedly has to say in its 2000 years old book...
Delusional disorders should be in there somewhere already.