WHO Classifies 'Gaming Disorder' as Mental Health Condition (cnn.com)

The World Health Organization has announced "gaming disorder" as a new mental health condition included in the 11th edition of its International Classification of Diseases, released Monday. From a report: "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.

A diagnosis standard, the ICD defines the universe of diseases, disorders, injuries and other related health conditions. Researchers use it to count deaths, diseases, injuries and symptoms, and doctors and other medical practitioners use it to diagnose disease and other conditions. In many cases, health care companies and insurers use the ICD as a basis for reimbursement. Poznyak said the expectation is that the classification of gaming disorder means health professionals and systems will be more "alerted to the existence of this condition" while boosting the possibility that "people who suffer from these conditions can get appropriate help."

Comments

Not a disorder

[Anonymous Coward]

Gamer dysphoria is not a disorder.
I identify as a gamer and demand to be treated as one, not as a mentally ill person.
No to gamerphobia!

Re:Not a disorder

[Mashiki]

Playing video games 24/7 is a mental disorder.

Dressing up in women's clothes and thinking you are a woman, to the point of cutting off your dick is, "Normal"

I see.

Don't forget that pushing it onto 3 year old kids is okay. But pointing out that it's child abuse isn't okay. Putting preteens on hormone blocks is okay too. Never mind that children have wild ideas like wanting to be a train/truck/street light/etc when they grow up.

There's going to be an entire generation of completely fucked up people, and in the worst case a lot of cases of parents getting killed by their kids for fucking up their lives.

Re: Not a disorder

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as women's clothing, men and women are equal, it's people's clothing.

Re:Not a disorder

[mrclevesque]

"Gamer dysphoria is not a disorder."

Of course. A Gaming Disorder diagnosis would mean a person's symptoms (eg gaming obsession and compulsion) cause them significant distress, affect their ability to function in daily life and the level of intensity, and duration, of the dysfunction exceeds the minimum diagnosis criteria.

Re:Not a disorder

[Austerity Empowers]

I try to consider the upside. Can I throw a harness on my dog and call him a "service dog"? Every time I take him out for a walk it's therapy for my gaming addiction. He's very well trained and quite persistent, I'd argue he is essential to my recovery.

The downside is my cat. He also is responsible for some gaming therapy, but I don't want an excuse to have him tethered to me.

Re: Not a disorder

[Anonymous Coward]

LMFAO right! your son wears a peoples bra because he's lazy and plays too many games and is growing tits because of it.....men and women are equal but clothing is not the same thing......male and female have different bodies and so clothing is designed with that in mind! are there really people that cannot see this for what it is!?

Re:Not a disorder

[drinkypoo]

No, but if you can get a shrink to sign a paper that says that your pets increase your quality of life, you can get them registered as comfort animals and then landlords in California have to permit you to keep them in the rental unit unless they are highly unsuitable for the space. And not just the normal kind of unsuitable, like a dog too big for an apartment, but more like a horse too big for an apartment.

Re:Not a disorder

[JaredOfEuropa]

Pushing it onto 3 year old kids is child abuse. Thankfully in the vast majority of cases in normal countries, nothing is being "pushed onto" these kids. Before these kids - and most adults as well - get anywhere near medicine, treatment or surgery, there's plenty of psychological evaluation, and the experts are very well capable of separating deluded cross dressers and kids with weird flights of fancy from those suffering from actual gender dysphoria. And those who actually do go through with the treatment are well motivated: this is not a journey you'll complete on a whim.

In normal cases, kids are being taught that the condition is an exception rather than the norm, but that there's nothing bad about it... and that it's a genuine condition that can manifest itself at a very early age, not some attention seeking crap from a neglected millenial. The best thing for such kids is recognition, diagnosis and if necessary the start of the process, not attempts to dismiss their condition or "pray the gay away" boot camps.

This generation of fucked up people will not spring up because kids are being taught about gender dysphoria. Where things go wrong is people catering to the attention seeking crap. People who added god nows how many letters now to LGBT or demanded that 3rd type of bathroom. The kind of people who demand that every flight of fancy is valid, to be accepted and recognized. And if that kind of thinking results in real or made up conditions being pushed on kids who aren't really suffering from them, then by all means treat that as the child abuse it is. But don't think that there are no children who genuinely have gender dysphoria, who'd benefit from early diagnosis and treatment.

Re:Not a disorder

[NicknameUnavailable]

gaymophobia

FTFY.

Re:Not a disorder

[atrex]

A child has to be diagnosed by a certified and trained psychologist with gender dysphoria before being able to receive treatment with prescription hormone supplements and blockers. 3 years old is probably too young for such a diagnosis.

Meanwhile, children that do suffer from gender dysphoria whose parents refuse to acknowledge it, (or worse, whose parents display an attitude of bigotry against it) often end up committing suicide or blaming their parents for "fucking up their lives" as you so eloquently put it.

The best hope a gender dysphoric child has of having a normal life is to receive love, acceptance, and treatment prior to puberty (ie before all the hormones get released and cause their body to mature in a way that is foreign to them).

Re:Not a disorder

[atrex]

Pardon, I meant psychiatrist. Psychologists can't issue prescriptions.

Re:Not a disorder

[Megol]

So you are a sadist. Why do you want others to suffer unnecessarily when we have the technology to avoid it?

This was about gaming addiction BTW, your obsession is unhealthy but not at the level of a disorder.

Re:Not a disorder

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course. A Gaming Disorder diagnosis would mean a person's symptoms (eg gaming obsession and compulsion) cause them significant distress, affect their ability to function in daily life and the level of intensity, and duration, of the dysfunction exceeds the minimum diagnosis criteria.

Hmm... Still not really to me. I agree that the addiction could interfere with the person's life because the person would always have a thought of playing game at all time; thus, the person can't focus on anything else. My brother was one of them. When he was going to high school, he skipped school for a whole month without my father knew about it until the school sent a letter to the house. He was taken out of school. Then a year later, my father put him back to school again. Sadly, he did it again so he was taken out of school again. The saving grace was that he went to religious school afterward, and this time he didn't skip school (no where to go from there). After he finished the school, his addiction was much less but still exists. To me, the way to fix addiction is to redirect the addict's mind to something else. Religious seems to be one of solutions though.

Re: Not a disorder

[Bing Tsher E]

Pretty much never. I have not seen it on the news.

You're projecting, but since you've done it anonymously, we sadly can't help you.

Re:Not a disorder

[Mashiki]

3.8 second search will find you plenty of psychiatrists who are more then happy to start diagnosing toddlers, and quite happy to give them drugs too. Let's not forget that most and by most, I mean nearly all kids grow out of gender dysphoria when left to their own devices. But let's not forget that dramatic spike in teen patients, or the 40% attempted suicide rate pre-transition and 70% post-transitition suicide rates either. Suicide rates that high screams serious mental problems, but the psychiatric community in many areas have already declared this to be 'transphobic' unlike the neurology-psychiatric community.

The best hope is to leave children to their own devices, and let them figure out where they fit in the world. The moment you start screwing with them prior to puberty, you're setting them on a path that will irrevocably screw up their life.

Re:Not a disorder

[Mashiki]

So you're a psychopath? Why do you want to impose a view on children when they're mentally, psychologically, and physically unable to understand the consequences. This is before they can legally have sex in every western country. Because that's what you're doing.

Or are you going to tell everyone that a 6-9 year old can fully understand the consequences of this. Never mind that in nearly all of the west, the mens rea(that's guilty mind) for committing of crime is leveled at ages 11-13. Even then, we have youth criminal codes because those kids do not understand their actions. And yes, you can easily find the people pushing this on kids. If you have one, or a niece, or a nephew, or worked with children in any form, you already know exactly how malleable their views are and how easily a person in authority can abuse it. Round this out with the fact that children work to please parents, they will readily adopt whatever position is presented to them at that age.

Re:Not a disorder

[Mashiki]

Nice projection. It's good to know my personal trolls are getting so unhinged these days, maybe you'll take the next big step and enter a psychiatric care program. One can only hope.

Re:Not a disorder

[Mashiki]

Sorry, but that's just transphobic you filthy bigot. Sticking sexual identity on 3, 5, 7 year olds is just plainly acceptable. Just look at those court rulings. It's just like the community that goes out of their way to attack psychologists and psychiatrists who have published studies showing that 'trans kids' grow out of it, the number of number of cases are so infinitesimally small in reality that it doesn't justify building specialized hospitals and treatment centers either, but they're both happening. The reality is, this isn't any different then the attention seeking "my kid has autism, woe is me" attention seeking by parents, doctors, and so on several years ago.

I also didn't say 'taught' rather that it's being forced on the kids, and you can easily find that without any trouble either. Problem is, because it's the trendy hot-shit right now, arguing that this is child abuse is transphobic. And so the lynch mobs will come for you, your job, and likely anything else they can get their fingers on.

Re:Not a disorder

[Mashiki]

You seem to have made the argument that conservatives are smarter then your average progressive because they don't eat tide pods. Would you like to know more?

Re:Not a disorder

[datavirtue]

Unfortunately, we will never be able to have the conversation about gene therapy treatments to restore a male or female's desire for the opposite sex because we are already committed to the narrative that it is a lifestyle choice that gay people make. We are close to a cure, but we long ago silenced the people who dared entertain the notion that it could be reversed. Perhaps when we are ruled under the Chinese they will make the cure available. It won't be a choice then.

Re:Not a disorder

[Mashiki]

Gene therapy wouldn't change anything anyway. You're not going to be growing new organs, or reabsorbing them anyway. And if you're going that far to modify a body, you might as well just cut your brain out and slap it into a shell and go on your way.

Re:Not a disorder

[Mashiki]

Why not? We impose views on impressionable kids all the time. If anything, it's strongly defended by the religious right as the freedom of the parents/guardians.

If we really cared for imposing dangerous ideas into impressionable kids, we'd have to start with expose kids to the Bible or the Quran. The First Amendment makes this a non-starter.

And here's the difference. In one case, a person can change their mind. Get up, walk away, no consequences and even rail about it until they drop dead of old age. In the other case, they're fundamentally screwing with their biology that's not reversible, will cause long term damage to every organ in their body, and fundamentally screw up their brain chemistry for life.

Yep, sounds just like the same thing. Gotta line up Jimmy so he can become Janey, and make the choice for them and fully dictate their life before they understand even the most basic consequences. Very good plan, yes, very good.

Re:Not a disorder

[datavirtue]

It happens.

Re: Not a disorder

[datavirtue]

Talented people usually do not survive University. You have to be somewhere in the realm of sociopathy-to-desperate-loser in order to value it and stick through. Perfect employees and managers they make.

Just another type of Addiction

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.healthyplace.com/addictions/addictions-information/types-of-addiction-list-of-addictions

Even though it's a behavioral and applies to almost everything in the world (gamification of anything).

Re:Just another type of Addiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I don't really see a difference between this and gambling addiction.

Re:Just another type of Addiction

[datavirtue]

Spot on....it has a much lower barrier to entry and no cap on the impact other than totally failing to do anything with your life and ending up severely depressed.

Great! One more

[mark_reh]

preexisting condition that health insurance companies can use to deny coverage ...

We are stupid and deserve everything that is happening to us.

The Differnce?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK then so the difference between being a mental disorder or not is 100% dependent on how much you move around.

-Brain damage from Football: OK
-Inhuman multitasking from RTS: Disorder

OK then

Health condition?

[Kohath]

If the cure for your disease is "just stop doing it", then is it really a health condition? Humans have agency. We decide what we do.

Perhaps we should change society so that we have two classes of individuals: people who are victims of their own choices (because they can’t control them), and people who control their choices and are therefore treated as full citizens.

Some of us are tired of being dragged down.

Re:Health condition?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do the liberals offer you? Powders and liquids for the sick?
We Klingons believe as you do. The weak should die.

Re:Health condition?

[gnick]

If the cure for your disease is "just stop doing it", then is it really a health condition?

I drank so much over about 5 years that my liver failed and damn near killed me. That takes dedicated drinking to the level of mental illness. When I was in the hospital being rescued from liver failure, I would have kept drinking if I could have figured out how to get alcohol into the hospital. The drinking resumed when I was discharged. Is mental illness manifesting as suicidally self-destructive behavior a health condition? I think so.

It's been almost 3 years since I "just stopped", but until you've been there you can't appreciate how difficult "just stopping" can be. For one, alcohol withdrawals are a bitch and weaning off requires control that most alcoholics don't have.

Victim of my own choices? Sure. Just like every other suicide.

Re:Health condition?

[Austerity Empowers]

3. People who had their bootstraps superglued to the ceiling from birth.

Re:Health condition?

[lucasnate1]

I think that the disease here is that people lack agency.

Re:Health condition?

[war4peace]

If the cure for your disease is "just stop doing it", then is it really a health condition?

Doesn't this apply to possibly EVERY addiction? I struggle to think of an addiction which doesn't involve "stop doing it" as a solution.

Re:Health condition?

[AmiMoJo]

Plenty of other addictions are considered genuine medical problems, so why not gaming? It has many of the typical attributes of addictive behaviours - it rewards continued use, creates feelings of joy and has a built in feedback mechanism.

We also know that some developers have studied addictive behaviours in order to incorporate them into their games, particularly "free to play" mobile ones but these days everything seems to have loot crates (literal gambling) and the like.

Re:Health condition?

[jythie]

You forget that the people who say this have no particular interest in other people stopping, only their own sense of superiority. It is a method of dealing with anxiety, not a proposed solution, kinda like rich people saying that the problem with poor people is they don't make enough money.

Re:Health condition?

[jythie]

The real debate is not 'is it a problem?', but 'is it a distinct problem that requires its own classification?'. So the question is really about it having unique attributes that help in diagnosis or impact treatment methods.

Re:Health condition?

[Sumus Semper Una]

If the cure for your disease is "just stop doing it", then is it really a health condition? Humans have agency. We decide what we do.

If humans were good at that then politics, laws, and government would be unnecessary and would not exist. We humans are surprisingly generally bad as individuals at making important decisions in a lot of situations. And decisions made by one very often end up affecting others. One who chooses to imbibe alcohol in excess is far more likely to make rash decisions towards others while inebriated.

Perhaps we should change society so that we have two classes of individuals: people who are victims of their own choices (because they can’t control them), and people who control their choices and are therefore treated as full citizens.

The problem is you usually don't figure out which category you might fall into until it's far too late to change it. Most people seem to want to lend a hand to help the people who want out but can't figure out how. You seem to want to treat them as subhuman. I find that abhorrent and similar in motivation to the worst parts of humanity from recorded history.

With all that being said, do I think gaming addiction is a major world problem? No. I'll agree that it *can* be a disorder, but there are certainly more serious mental health issues worth devoting resources to over this one.

Re:Health condition?

[AlanBDee]

It's been almost 3 years since I "just stopped", but until you've been there you can't appreciate how difficult "just stopping" can be. For one, alcohol withdrawals are a bitch and weaning off requires control that most alcoholics don't have.

Well done on your 3 years. I count myself very lucky to have never found myself addicted to alcohol, suffer from depression or any other number of mental illnesses. It is very ignorant for anyone to assume that just because they didn't struggle with any of these that others should "just be able to stop". If it were easy then it wouldn't be such big a problem.

I will never really understand what's it's like but that shouldn't stop me from having sympathy for those who do.

Re:Health condition?

[Train0987]

The problem isn't that there aren't enough defined mental illnesses, it's that there are too many. The field of psychiatry has jumped the shark. It seems their only purpose now is to increase the number of paying patients to include everyone and then medicating the entire planet. They're just legal drug dealers at this point.

Re:Health condition?

[jythie]

Generally the way it works is there are general disorder classifications. It isn't that one is a disorder while the other is not, but that one might fall under a more generic category while something else might be different enough that it deserves its own. So you probably would not have 'peanut butter eating' as a disorder, but 'eating' might, while 'eating non food items' gets another category.

Re:Health condition?

[Kohath]

So an alcoholic can just decide on a whim to throw away the bottle and just never buy one again?

Don’t they have to? Is there another acceptable option where alcoholics just keep drinking?

Re:Health condition?

[Kohath]

Doesn't this apply to possibly EVERY addiction? I struggle to think of an addiction which doesn't involve "stop doing it" as a solution.

For an addicted person, what’s the acceptable alternative to stopping?

No one said it was easy. Sometimes you have to do things that aren’t easy.

Re:Health condition?

[Kohath]

Do you think you are better off having been treated as a full member of society with all the freedoms everyone else has to buy and drink liquor? Or would you have been better off in a society that took a more parental approach to you specifically?

What if it were voluntary and temporary— subject to a test to get full citizenship status back: liquor is made available to you and you decline it for a period of time (like a year)?

Because the current society is a strong enabler of self-destructive behavior. And it doesn’t seem to be helping either the people who need help or the people who don’t.

Re:Health condition?

[gnick]

Or would you have been better off in a society that took a more parental approach to you specifically?

Like one that said that I'd have to hit a breathalyzer 4 times a day for a year if I wanted to see my kids? That was a fine place for me to start. Never been arrested or accused of a crime, not even neglect, just accurately described to the court as a drunk by Mrs. gnick #1.

Re:Health condition?

[Kohath]

I “just stopped” 3 times already today.

Re:Health condition?

[Kohath]

Does "white knighting" self-destructive behavior help? Or does it mostly just enable the behavior?

Re: Health condition?

[Bing Tsher E]

That sounds pretty awkward, even a handicap. Definitely more disabling than cases 1 or 2.

Re:Health condition?

[Mashiki]

Yeah this "addictive behavior" complex is called a skinner box, you might have learned about them in high school. That doesn't make it a medical condition though, not anymore then say...working for a living to make money and "get stuff to survive." Which is also a skinner box called life.

Re:Health condition?

[cascadingstylesheet]

The problem isn't that there aren't enough defined mental illnesses, it's that there are too many. The field of psychiatry has jumped the shark. It seems their only purpose now is to increase the number of paying patients to include everyone and then medicating the entire planet. They're just legal drug dealers at this point.

How would you know this?

Any more than you (and I do mean you, not "one") could know if "too many" beta blockers are being prescribed nowadays, as compared to 1950?

Re:Health condition?

[war4peace]

For an addicted person, what’s the acceptable alternative to stopping?

None, but the GP challenged it being a disorder based on "stop doing it" being the solution.

Re:Health condition?

[datavirtue]

If you have never been depressed...even in the slightest, there is no way you can possibly sympathize. I am very optimistic, rosey-eyed, but not goofy--level headed. I get waves of depression (probably not clinical) that shut me down for days. The whole time I'm trying to work through it and talk myself off the ledge. It is truly fucked up. I cannot imagine how it is for someone who is clinically depressed--how do they not end it all? You literally cannot care for anything under that subliminal mind fuck. I try to beat it out with intense excersize...and that does work to some extent but it is often just suppressed for a short while. It is not depression if you can get an ice cream cone or go for a run to get rid of the anxiety--or so they say.

Due to my achievements in life, resulting from my constant optimism, I can't put my finger on where this is coming from. I sometimes theorize that some Soros character is beaming radio waves tuned to make successful white men crack up. Perhaps it is due to a testosterone reduction that comes with age? Staying super busy on creative projects seems to prevent it. I wouldn't try to grind this out on extra hours at Wal-Mart.

Re: Health condition?

[datavirtue]

It is but they run with it anyway.

Re:Health condition?

[datavirtue]

You forgot to mention that the feelings of joy lead to a big drop were the person seeks the joy that created the drop to fix the drop. It doesn't just cut off with the joy part.

Re:Health condition?

[datavirtue]

It is just addiction/gambling. There is no need for any other classification. Why do we have to have a codified law for everything named after the specific affliction. No such thing as a hate crime. Fucking cults.

Re:Health condition?

[datavirtue]

What you describe is not life and the fact that a lot of people would not question your definition is perhaps the reason for so much angst and turmoil in the western world.

Re:Health condition?

[datavirtue]

" pre-existing crime of enjoying video games"

They are NOT enjoying them if they are addicted!

Re:Health condition?

[datavirtue]

I did it but everyone is different. I "handle" my alcohol whereas some people cannot--in any way shape or form of the imagination. Have you ever seen someone go completely off the rails after a few drinks? I have. Really super ugly--sad. The only way to deal with it is to lock them up and control their life/environment. That is a violation of their human rights.

Re:Health condition?

[datavirtue]

...and accidentally save the country whereas your alternative would have been the same old wonderful magical grind that has done us so well?

ADHD

[lucasnate1]

Isn't this just a private case of attention span deficit disorder? To me it looks like one is incapable to control what one gives attention to, and I see no difference between a "gaming addict" and a "facebook addict".

Re:ADHD

[Anonymous Coward]

...I see no difference between a "gaming addict" and a "facebook addict".

Oh, you don't? Here, let me clarify.

There is no such thing as a facebook addict according to the social media generation. Everyone does it, so it must be normal and accepted.

As far as gaming addicts go, THOSE fucking losers have a real problem, and should get help.

Re:ADHD

[danomac]

20 years ago if you were online in chat rooms all the time it was quite frowned on, actually. Amazing how once the general populous does it all of a sudden it's OK.

Re: ADHD

[Bing Tsher E]

I have never wanted to log onto facebook and 'just hang out.' I have an account and log onto it a few times a year for family stuff, but it has never been something I compulsively engage in.

I know that I am not alone, nor that unusual. I just don't care about Facebook.

Re:ADHD

[sd4f]

There was an article written over 3 years ago about the sexodus, I have my suspicions that pathologising gaming addiction is specifically targeted because of a group of predominantly male gamers who are 'checking out' of society and regressing into non productivity. They're in bliss living a subsistence life that provides enough for them to just play their games.

I suspect that this has not gone on unnoticed, and as a result, attempts are being made to seriously address this with serious academics behind it (read; NOT humanities)

Re:ADHD

[datavirtue]

Right. We are on a slippery slope here. If they keep running their mouth about game addiction they are afraid of losing credibility when it leads to that same conclusion you point out about facebook. Sort of like when the Supreme Court is debating a sensitive ruling/case and they weasel out of it to maintain credibility with the proletariat.

We have known the dangers of sugar for years but we keep on stuffing it in our neck by the pound. The state trying to do somethihng about it would be too risky because even though it may be the right measure to ban it or limit its production or volume in food the backlash from society would erase the effort and persecute the sponsors.

Imagine trying to tell everyone that their facebook use is harmful, codifying it in a peer-reviewed medical journal. The AMA wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole lest they lose the credibility and power they have over us right now. Not tot mention they are addicted as well.

Re:ADHD

[datavirtue]

There is a laundry list of behavior we could enumerate.

Sugar, the drug everyone can agree on. Main ingredient for cancer---cant sell any food without loading it in.

Re:ADHD

[datavirtue]

I can live like that without video games--and have. I think most men have always been that way--it is our nature bestowed by evolution. I programmed instead of playing video games though. Another form of addiction I guess.

Re:ADHD

[lucasnate1]

I don't know how it is with Americans, but as a rabid Facebook user with similar friends, we're quite aware that it we have a bad habit (although for some of us there are also positive things about Facebook use).

Re:Great! One more

[Anonymous Coward]

preexisting condition that health insurance companies can use to deny coverage ...

We are stupid and deserve everything that is happening to us.

Those who allow a problem to become an addiction are stupid and tend to deserve what happens to them, particularly when an addiction is NOT instantaneous and does not create a physical dependency. That kind of addiction takes time and dedication to create. Society as a whole should not be forced to subsidize treatments for such a problem, and yet that is exactly what you're asking for when you want to remove any preexisting condition limiters.

and then stop working and go on SSDI where work is

[Joe_Dragon]

and then stop working and go on SSDI where work is bad = a few more hours at a low wage job = health insurance as you are under 30 hours a week but make over medcade / ssdi cutoff.

Neat

[Anonymous Coward]

Now when are they finally going to classify religion as a mental disorder?

Re:Neat

[datavirtue]

Perhaps it is. As pointed out by Joseph Campbell though, religion is like software: a code of laws aimed at a specific goal. It works, but only in the context of its invention. Using it in the wrong domain creates problems.

Re:Neat

[datavirtue]

The Jesus Myth was just a way to impart a new way of thinking about how to organize ourselves and our governments to be compassionate and happy without accumulating stuff. It has not been implemented widely but it is there for the taking. I don't know of any "teachings of Jesus."

Re:Yet...

[guruevi]

Uhm... https://www.psychiatry.org/pat...

It's never too early to quit.

[Anonymous Coward]

https://gamequitters.com

Re:It's never too early to quit.

[war4peace]

You met 3 out of 9 criteria for video game addiction. A score under five shows less problematic use, but if you are still concerned it is worth investigating.

I need to game more.

I don't know who ...

[CaptainDork]

... classifies gaming disorder as mental health condition.

Re:I don't know who ...

[rsilvergun]

Who did.

Re:I don't know who ...

[CaptainDork]

Well played.

I do not trust the W.H.O.

[Rick Schumann]

The so-called 'World Health Organization' seems to be more of a political organization with an agenda than it is anything that exists solely for reasons of medical science, therefore I do not consider it to be trustworthy or credible.

Re:I do not trust the W.H.O.

[DogDude]

Do you have any reason for feeling that it's a political organization, instead of a health organization? I don't see any evidence at all of what you're describing.

Re:I do not trust the W.H.O.

[stephanruby]

What makes you say that? Are you an antivaxxer? Or is there a different controversy I missed?

Re:I do not trust the W.H.O.

[Rick Schumann]

They don't stick to purely medical or science-based subjects, they keep straying into social and political subjects, and the way they do that smells an awful lot like they've got an agenda.

Re: I do not trust the W.H.O.

[Bing Tsher E]

I, too weep for what slashdot has become. Mere non logged on cowards take on signed-in people and challange them like an A.C. has an opinion of substance. I don't necessarily agree with the GP commenter, but anonymous snipers like the above just turn this site into a crapflood.

Re:I do not trust the W.H.O.

[stephanruby]

Gun control?

Re:I do not trust the W.H.O.

[datavirtue]

Every organization is political.

Anything that gets me out of me

[karlandtanya]

tl/dr: A moral hazard exists when corporations profit from deliberately fostering addictive behaviour in the public but are not liable for the damage they cause. Regulation is possible, but the nature of the industry to be regulated makes them resistant to regulation.

Anything that makes me feel different can be an addiction.

Social media and gaming companies have figured this out and done their very best to take advantage of people's ability to become addicted to something.
Take cocaine or nicotine for example. As long as nobody is trying to make the thing addictive, there's not much of a problem to the societies where it's used, e.g. First Nations in the Americas. The people with the greatest tendency to become addicts will still become addicts, but most folks will use these medicines for the purpose they were given to people.

But...refine the coca or manipulate the chemistry and packaging of the tobacco and damn near *everybody* now has the chance to become addicted. And if they don't become addicted, change the formula until they do.

The larger problem is not cocaine, tobacco, social media, or gaming. The larger problem is that we, as a society, reward corporations that enslave their users. Dope dealer or casino operator are probably NOT be the career you encourage your children to pursue. You probably tell them those are not honorable lines of work, and encourage them to shun those who make their living that way.

But there is NO social or financial cost to corporations who do the same thing with games, gambling, "likes" and "friends", or even--in the case of Purdue Pharma are literal dope dealers. The economic term for this is "moral hazard".

Recognizing a specific kind of addiction is addressing one instance of the whole class of behaviors that corporations use to manipulate the public.
It is a short-term solution that may help an individual today to help his or her self.
It does NOTHING to solve the societal problem.

For that, we need feedback to the people or corporations making the decisions. The FDA in its early incarnation was effective at this, but regulatory capture has occurred and now they're just a barrier to entry for competitors to the entrenched players. Similarly for gambling regulators--they started out as good, but have been subverted by the folks they're supposed to regulate.
Nevertheless, the fact that regulatory agencies do exist shows that they can contribute to our society without destroying our freedom; in fact they exist to protect us from predatory organizations that would otherwise be far more dangerous to the life, liberty, and property we claim to hold so dear.

We're seeing some inroads with financial addictions (payday lending); we need to apply the same legal and social efforts to those that profit from behavioral addictions. It's much more of a challenge because the organizations we need to regulate are very good at manipulating public behavior. This makes them resistant to legal and social pressure.

Re:Anything that gets me out of me

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn those corporations for giving people what they want!
I can't believe the nerve of them - why, when I say I want a fun and interesting game to play, obviously I actually mean I want one that will make me want to quit and never come back. How dare they give me something good for my money? /sarc

In other words, buddy, you can take your snotty complaints of "moral hazard" and shove them up your ass

Yeah. Pin Ball

[Anonymous Coward]

Folks used to play pin ball a lot. As a matter of fact, why didn't the WHO mention those Pin Ball Wizards?!

Re: Great! One more

[Evtim]

Are you stating that addictions that does not include 'substance' or 'physical' as you called it are any less troublesome (or addictive).
How naive...or ignorant...or both

Re:Mental health issues...

[Austerity Empowers]

Don't confuse this shit with science.

Gender is real, but it is provably not binary. Whether you want to classify those non-binary case as a mutation/disorder or nature running its course is more of a social statement, not a scientific statement.

Re:New label?

[war4peace]

I've read "Sturgeon General" :)

Re:Great! One more

[atrex]

Gambling is a recognized addiction. Several video games use techniques similar to those employed by gambling to increase player engagement and retention.
In reality, gaming addiction is just another form of gambling addiction; it's the same psychological triggers that are used to cause both.

Yes it is

[aepervius]

Replace gaming with heroin and you see why. It is the "doing it" which is the health condition. The health condition is "doing it, being unable to stop, AND this has a negative impact on job/life/etc...". The second part is the one people forget the addition in the DMS is about..

addiction schmiction.

[Anonymous Coward]

I still don't believe addiction of any kind is some sort of a disorder.

The original addiction studies showed that it was largely sociological. The rats when isolated from their social group began choosing the cocaine-laced water. Once returned to their society they went back to the plain water. Substances are clearly not a part of the equation. Gambling "addiction" is a clear indicator of that. The exact same behavior patterns exist there without any substance abuse in the equation at all.

Then you can compare other cultures. Cultures (eg asian) where public intoxication is greatly shunned, yet have opium dens where it's deemed appropriate to go get high and sleep it off out of sight, do not have high numbers of addiction problems.
Cultures that embrace substance use, or where families and friends accept people that abuse substances have a much lower rate of abuse than those cultures that shun people that abuse substances. The social aspect is tantamount to their need. The substance or behavior is helping them replace a lack of dopamine normally obtained by healthy social interactions.

It seems to me that the evidence strongly suggests that since our brains are simply programmable neural networks where feedback mechanisms can be instigated via substances, food, drugs, or behavior patterns (whatever the manner of input is all the same to that hunk of flesh we call a brain that processes them), addiction is simply the state where such a feedback mechanism has been introduced, whose behavioral side effects are judged as negative by the community.

Neural networks can be altered and retrained. Calling the condition a disorder as if it's somehow inherent seems a stretch. I think it's inherent to *all* humans since we all have a neural net and the capacity to train it into a similar condition given the requisite combination of inputs. Eschewing responsibility by calling it a disorder is counterproductive to helping people break the conditioning. They need to change their inputs and decisions until the feedback loop is broken or replaced with a better, healthier model.

Re:addiction schmiction.

[datavirtue]

"The substance or behavior is helping them replace a lack of dopamine normally obtained by healthy social interactions."

Hit the nail on the head. Damn.

yes it is (corrected text)

[aepervius]

Replace gaming with heroin and you see why. It isn't the "doing it" which is the health condition. The health condition is "doing it, being unable to stop, AND this has a negative impact on job/life/etc...". The second part is the one people forget the addition in the DMS is about... Sorry I missed adding the negation in the previous post.

Re:New label?

[serviscope_minor]

your claim sounds a bit fishy to me.

Why's this so hard to believe?

[foxalopex]

There's Alcohol addition, gambling addiction so gaming addiction isn't exactly a huge surprise. For some folks it can be a real problem.

Re:Why's this so hard to believe?

[OrangeTide]

A modern casino is a big arcade with video games dumbed down for non-gamers. Having played freemium mobile games before I ever went into a casino, I was a bit shocked on my first trip to a casino that the video slots operated with the same sort of inane game play and flashy graphics.

And I'm not going to blame all gambling addiction on gaming. For example there are plenty of people who lose everything on sports betting. Which is at least old school and not electronic stimulus engineered to trigger your pleasure centers.

Does this disability

[Ryanrule]

Qualify for medical MJ?

I believe it

[old_skul]

Trust me, as the parent of a young boy who's obsessed with Minecraft and Portal 2, I can testify to the hold games have on him.

Re:Mental health issues...

[Train0987]

There's no such thing as YY. What you meant to say was XYY, which is a birth defect effecting less than 1 in 1,000 males.

WHO gets to define normal human behavior

[OrangeTide]

If you resist being a good little cog, you can take these pills.

Re:Mental health issues...

[parkinglot777]

There's no such thing as YY. What you meant to say was XYY, which is a birth defect effecting less than 1 in 1,000 males.

There are more than just XYY. There are XXY or XXXY as well.

Re:Mental health issues...

[Train0987]

All incredibly rare birth defects. A person is more likely to be born with an extra finger.

False dichotomy

[rsilvergun]

We can have services to help addicts _and_ fully legal substances.

Re: Game Companies Already Know This

[Bing Tsher E]

I played Elder Scrolls Online last night for the first time in awhile. A somewhat sinister seeming NPC was hanging out in town who I approached. I discovered that there was a Loot Box I could open. Fine, I did.

Then he wanted me to buy more of them. And vanished when turned him down.

I'm sure I'll encounter him again.

But it's back to non-premium Albion Online for me, because It's relaxing to just grind sometimes.

How does this interact with the ADA?

[EndlessNameless]

In the US, "reasonable accommodations" are expected for people with disabilities.

If gaming disorder is a diagnosable mental illness, what accommodations can disabled persons request?

I don't really want to know the answer. I just want to watch the debate.

Re:Mental health issues...

[Austerity Empowers]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The last maybe duplicates a bit on the former. Probably others. Gender is definitely not binary, and I cannot imagine what such people go through in life but without things of this nature, there wouldn't be a human race to have the debate.

And the American Psychiatric Association says:

[sabbede]

Uhm, no. We need "more research" before we get behind your stupid, stupid idea.

Re:Who is cremier?

[datavirtue]

Forget it. I have asked many times for clarification only to be accused of being creimer.

SHAFT!

[adam.ainsworth]

You're damn right