World Health Organization to add Gaming Disorder to ICD

Definition (thanks @Linguica): 

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.

I'd like to hear y'alls opinion on this.

Good, it is a disorder.

My first reaction: Wuuuuuuuut?? Did my parents get the ear of the WHO?

My second reaction:

If gaming is a mental disorder, than what about any other activities (watching T.V./movies, listening to music, reading, sports, et cetera ad infinitum)? Are those next? Also, what constitutes "too much gaming"? Some "doctor" will get paid way too much money by some collection of world governments to arbitrarily decide how much gaming is good for you.

There wasn't some official name for this before and now there is. Whatever? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

1 minute ago, Linguica said:

Good, it is a disorder.

Not necessarily. It's more like a symptom caused by other disorders i.e. depression or anxiety. The gaming in of itself does not cause the behavior described. 

Just now, 42PercentHealth said:

If gaming is a mental disorder, than what about any other activities (watching T.V./movies, listening to music, reading, sports, et cetera ad infinitum)? Are those next? Also, what constitutes "too much gaming"? Some "doctor" will get paid way too much money by some collection of world governments to arbitrarily decide how much gaming is good for you.

Precisely my point.

What kind of bullshit is this now? Every day there's something else stupid going on.

Quote

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.

Sounds reasonable to me??

Addiction has been part of the WHO's mental disorder classifications for years.  From what I can tell, all this is doing is formally expanding the list of things that people are known to be addicted to, and have tangible problems with.  There's only going to be so many news stories of South Korean kids dying at their PC before the WHO takes notice.

I see nothing wrong with it personally.  If I'm understanding this right, all this means is the international healthcare community now recognizes that video game addiction is a real thing, something we all know is true. 

I don't think you necessarily need to already be troubled in order to become addicted. The industry is frighteningly good at creating huge games with endless amounts of content that just beg you to return again and again and invest more and more hours so that you can unlock the next achievement or whatever. Any person that isn't amazing at self-control can become a victim of these games and lose touch with reality. I believe a lot of us have been there at some point in time.

Damn, I didn't know that playing Monopoly too much is a real disorder.

4 minutes ago, EmotionalFelineinaMadstate said:

Damn, I didn't know that playing Monopoly too much is a real disorder.

35 minutes ago, Major Arlene said:

Otherwise, I'd like to hear y'alls opinion on this. Doom, as we all know, did almost become a cause of something like this happening back in '99 after another certain thing happened.

 

I don't see how this "certain thing that happened" has anything to do with what the supposed "gaming disorder" is about.

I also don't see how the definition of said "gaming disorder" is in any way shape or form unreasonable, either.

I furthermore don't see why I should sign a petition that has been conjured up by a bunch of people on a whim, who lack any sort of qualification to be able to tell what a particular disorder could be or not.

Let's be fair here, stories of people living a totally normal and healthy life until eventually they got sucked into a game and became social degenerates aren't exactly unheard of. So what is all the outrage about?

Also, the people who sit in front of their TV all day, while they dust their faces with cheetos... How do they enter into this? Sounds like a severe case of whataboutism to me.

Western medicine is expert at treating symptoms over root causes; gaming is but another escape from reality.

1 minute ago, Fonze said:

Western medicine is expert at treating symptoms over root causes; gaming is but another escape from reality.

Gaming addiction's in that sort of borderline position where it's both commonly a symptom and a disorder all on its own, thanks to how uniquely engaging video games are.

See, that makes them a great escape from other problems like depression or abuse, yes, but it also means that a game - especially something like an RPG - can just suck in a person's attention from anything else even if they don't have anything to escape from. I'm pretty sure we've all heard of or even know people who all of a sudden lost all care about their passions or future due to them finding a game that they just enjoyed so much that they felt like they had to spend every waking hour enjoying it above all else - that's what this about, and it's even more of a concern nowadays what with more companies around than ever before that don't mind using unscrupulous methods, like skinner boxes, to exploit human psychology and make their games even more addictive.

It seems like they're just naming a specific form of addiction, which the WHO already does for specific addictions in the ICD.  One thing to keep in mind is that, in order for a specific behavior to be diagnosed as a disorder, it has to significantly affect the day-to-day life of the person in question and keep them from being able to do things like eating, sleeping, personal hygiene, etc.  Being a gamer isn't a disorder.  Being so addicted to games that you can't shower yourself, you ignore friends, etc... and for a decent period of time... that's when it's becomes an addiction disorder.

For example, everyone has anxiety from time to time, right?  It's a normal, valid human emotion.  Just because you may experience more than someone else doesn't mean you have anxiety disorder.  When you get to the point where the anxiety keeps you from leaving your home, keeps you from being able to feed yourself, leads to you cutting yourself, causes disassociation episodes where you can't function or talk... things like that are when it becomes a disorder.  In fact, everything I just listed a portion of why I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.

Also, anxiety and depression may be the cause of the addiction, like you said.  But it can also be a symptom of the addiction.  These sort of things tend to work themselves into positive feedback loops.

Because the WHO...

OK, ok, I am stopping now.

Seriously though, I find this as stupid and nonsensical as the idea of e-sports.

My mind says that this is a waste of saliva (or computer text in this case) and it is not happening soon or at least it won't be accepted by gamers for two reasons:

1) Not all gamers are going to know about this decision, so they can't all argue on the topic. Therefore, even if the WHO decide to call this thing 'gaming disorder', it won't matter, since the term won't be used and it shall become forgotten.

2) Even if all gamers knew of this subject, still, I think nobody right in their minds would agree on this decision.

3) This decision spells 'false priorities' with capital bold letters. Don't they have more serious things to consider in that WHO, or whatever it's called? Who is going to take them seriously, even if gaming was indeed a problem here???

4) Could this Jasarevic guy be more specific about which countries have this 'gaming problem' and could they have some kind of evidence in this 'scientific article'??? Seems pretty fishy to me how they make assumptions and shove them at our faces without percentages of the 'problem', compared to the entire population.

I mean, even with the statistics, it wouldn't change much for me, though I would kinda respect the WHO's ideas, up to a point.

To sum up, this is totally unnecessary BS.

Call it a disorder if you like. I'd prefer to call it "simple living".

"Up next on CNN: The WHO recognizes that excessive videogaming is a mental disorder. We'll have an interview with the pro-gamer side, including one gamer who has sent the WHO death threats after spending 2 hours screaming at 12-year olds in Call of Duty WWII. In the meantime, a word from our sponsors" 

I think I'm mostly concerned that this will turn into what happened with ADHD not too long ago- greedy doctors wanting to wring money out of their patients and tired parents wanting to just get their kids stoned so they'll behave. As long as it as diagnosed properly (like it should have been in these cases) after ruling out any other root causes, I won't take any more issue with it. But even still, I'm not sure what their point is of having a description without having any kind of treatment or at least prevention measures. Like yea, your kid has this disorder, but there's isn't much we can recommend you do about it. Now cough up $250 for the diagnosis please.

Maybe if real life wasn't such a fucking Goddamn shithole people wouldn't increasingly use video games as a means of escapism? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

I mean, if it's not video games, it's alcohol, drugs, gambling (which has been kind of leaking into gaming lately thanks to loot boxes), or something else to cling to as a psychological crutch to keep from gargling some 12-gauge mouthwash, whether it's self-administered or administered to other people unwillingly. Most people have that "thing" that helps them make it through the day without killing someone else or themselves.

There's a deeper social disorder or dysfunction involved that unfortunately either doesn't have a quick fix (any good fix to social ailments is never quick or short-term) or can't be fixed because of the clown fiesta we have running the country/world doesn't want it fixed. It's fucked up because they want it fucked up because it benefits them. You can treat addiction all day until the cows come home and until you're blue in the face. However, until deeper social problems like inequality, lack of economic/social mobility, prejudice, lack of access to basic needs, etc. are addressed, people are going to find ways to cope with shitty life circumstances. Cure them of one addiction and they'll just go to another.

Or they'll eventually snap and kill others/themselves when they eventually have nothing left to go to.

im cautiously indifferent to this development

41 minutes ago, Major Arlene said:

I think I'm mostly concerned that this will turn into what happened with ADHD not too long ago-

You do have to realize you're attacking an assumed future outcome though, right? Like, do you honestly think there's anything wrong with the proposed qualification? I think the definition sounds quite reasonable. If crooked doctors make a spectacle out of it in order to syphon more bux, then that negative outcome needs to be addressed by various means I'm too lazy to conjure up right now. I don't think the hypothetical outcome (no matter how likely) is a reason to shut down the entire effort though.

Whoever waves around their anecdotal experience of personally being a responsible gamer in order to dismiss that some other people might have a problem... Well, I'm pretty sure people dealing with alcoholics or gamblers would chase you out of town with that reasoning.

I wonder if watching too much TV or listening to too much music is a disorder as well.

Ok. Nine Inch Heels summed it up perfectly. I misunderstood. Wish the articles pushed out in the news would contain the longer definition instead of a way oversimplified version. I should have done more research. Anyone up for closing the thread?

8 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Good evening everybody, this is Nine Inch Heels giving you the play-by-play.

 

What people think this is about:

 

What it's really about:

 

How quite a few people reacted thus far:

 

That's the summary of page 01 of this thread. Stay tuned for page 02 coming soon to a doomworld near you.

You don't understand. They targeted gamers. 

GAMERS

Excessive anything is a disorder. Chances are the very word disorder means anything not orderly is a disorder.

19 minutes ago, Major Arlene said:

Ok. Nine Inch Heels summed it up perfectly. I misunderstood. Wish the articles pushed out in the news would contain the longer definition instead of a way oversimplified version. I should have done more research. Anyone up for closing the thread?

Oh, don't feel bad for serving as the vessel for this discussion. Hysterical articles about gaming have been our faithful companion for what, 30 years? Yes, even before the Doom times. And we do have to find a reasonable position somewhere between "completely harmless hobby leave me alone mom" and "they're selling mass murder simulators in the lootboxes".

Talk about missing the point! Instead of treating the obsessive personality, let's just demonize another activity.

You know, in the grand scheme of things, considering all the possibilities, playing video games is probably one of the safest things a person could obsess on.

It's what I call "meddling": Someone's always meddling in someone else's business.

16 minutes ago, kb1 said:

It's what I call "meddling": Someone's always meddling in someone else's business.

and this is what I call "assuming everyone's a meddler so I'm not going to bother actually reading anything"