[News] "gaming disorder" to be listed as a mental health condition?

So the World Health Organization seems to be considering adding "gaming disorder" to the ICD (International Classification of Disease). The draft for ICD-11 includes this entry:

Gaming disorder is characterized by a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behaviour ('digital gaming' or 'video-gaming'), which may be online (i.e., over the internet) or offline, manifested by: 1) impaired control over gaming (e.g., onset, frequency, intensity, duration, termination, context); 2) increasing priority given to gaming to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other life interests and daily activities; and 3) continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences. The behaviour pattern is of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning. The pattern of gaming behaviour may be continuous or episodic and recurrent. The gaming behaviour and other features are normally evident over a period of at least 12 months in order for a diagnosis to be assigned, although the required duration may be shortened if all diagnostic requirements are met and symptoms are severe.

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This isn't a new thing, I believe a few countries have already recognized gaming obsessions as a disorder for several years now - prevalence and diagnoses are high in China and Korea, and obsessive gaming has resulted in deaths by exhaustion and dehydration; sometimes people even forget to eat.

What are your thoughts on this? I know some people can go overboard and suffer health implications due to their gaming, but on the other hand, picking this out to classify as an addiction or disorder seems a bit excessive as it isn't that different from any other hobby. As this professor argued:

"There are people out there who overdo video games," Ferguson said, "but people overdo lots of stuff, so why games? Why not just have a general behavioral addiction category that can apply to anything that people overdo?"

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Some people have also brought up the case of professional gamers; they would seemingly fit the bill of this "disorder" because of how many hours a day they have to train, but it's a part of their job.

Yeah, I kind of have to agree with the 2nd quote, it's really not something specific to video games, or specific to anything really. It's basically just addiction--something that is already considered amongst the list of mental health issues, right? So why make a gaming specific entry in that case?

I'll leave my political/sociological thoughts out, as this is not the right place to discuss this stuff.

I will, however, say a couple things. First of all: there's no such thing called gaming disorder. If anything, it's a symptom of the real problem.

As you may agree: people have a reason why they play games. Likewise, if they play games a lot, they also have a reason why they do so. Most obvious reason is that they simply like playing games a lot. In that case if they decide to spend a hugh chunk of their freetime playing games, that's their decision and nobody else should be allowed to judge that.

The other big reason I see is simply escapism. If you have a lot of stress due to your work/social environment, etc. why would you not try escaping to something that is actually fun? If there's something problematic, then it must lie within that work/social environment and not the gaming habits.

My first thought when I saw this news was "oh, so the health care industry is recognizing the (alleged) link between video games and violence, especially school shootings".

If this diagnosis had been around in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I definitely would have at least been a candidate for the label "gaming disorder", given that I viewed games as an "escape" from the real world and the stresses of it, including school.

Another thing to consider, though, is that everything seems to be considered a 'disorder' or 'disease' these days.

I too agree with the second quote. My parents always yell at me for gaming too much, when they watch TV just as much as I do...

+1

The people prone to excessive gaming probably would/has also had other obsessive problems. I know myself to become temporarily obsessed with games or shows or some hobby. Thankfully my short attention span balances it out so I'm never stuck in it for too long :D

I buy loads of games every month even though I don't really like games. That's probably a disorder of sorts.

One of my Disquis friends says it best:

Why are they trying to give every form of addiction its own term? It's unnecessary. Addiction shows the same symptoms no matter what the trigger is. Be it gambling, drinking, gaming, internet, phone, or YES even work or exercise, two addictions that society actually ENCOURAGES people to have.

This strange desire to classify each and every form of addiction as its own causes more harm than good. The fact that people are dismissing it shows that. Addiction is addiction and anything can be addictive to the right person.

We need to deal with the root issues and stop acting like the trigger is the problem.

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... Why not just classify addiction as a mental health condition instead of making so many different classifications of mental health disorders? Dependence Syndrome is already classified but it only includes Substance Abuse in spite of the fact that you can become dependent on anything. It would be a lot more prudent to just expand the definition of Dependence Syndrome to include all kinds of addictions, imo.

I would like to say that I think some people are overreacting to this a little bit. The criteria for this disorder doesn't make a statement about how long someone has to play a game but instead classifies it based on severity. However this condition is probably going to end up being over diagnosed. The majority of people who play video games, (even those who play an extremely large amount,) wouldn't fit the criteria for this disorder but given how out-of-touch the WHO obviously is for this to even be considered its own disorder I'm doubtful about their judgement. Additionally it's easy to slap a diagnosis on something for the sake of money even if they don't really need treatment. Just look at how commonly ADHD is diagnosed in children who don't need treatment.

I dunno. It's a really stupid situation.