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Gaming Addiction Recognized As An Official Mental Disorder

EnolaGaia

EnolaGaia

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It's been debated and joked about for decades. Now, for the first time, video / computer game addiction has been officially designated as a disorder.

Video Game Addiction Becomes Official Mental Disorder in Controversial Decision by WHO

Video games can be highly engrossing, but can some people become addicted to gaming? The World Health Organization (WHO) says yes.

Recently, the WHO officially recognized "gaming disorder" as a mental health condition — adding the disorder to the International Classification of Diseases, or the ICD-11, the organization's official diagnostic manual, according to CBS News.

Simply playing a lot of video games isn't enough to count as a disorder. Rather, the disorder occurs when gaming interferes with people's daily lives. According to the WHO, gaming disorder is a "pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behavior" in which people lose control of their gaming behavior, give priority to gaming over other interests and activities, and continue gaming despite negative consequences, such as impairments in their family relationships, social lives, work duties or other areas.

A person typically needs to have symptoms for a year in order to be diagnosed with the disorder, WHO said. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/65580-video-game-addiction-mental-health-disorder.html

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https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/deaths-related-to-video-games-gamers-gaming.2920/

Do Video Games Trigger Natural Opiates / Neural Pleasure Responses?
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Confessions Of A Computer Game Addict
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The Chinese government has announced new limits on minors' online gaming time in an effort to prevent gaming addiction.
China cuts online gaming time for minors

Chinese regulators have slashed the amount of time players under the age of 18 can spend on online games to an hour on Fridays, weekends and holidays, in response to concerns over gaming addiction, state media reports say.

The rules, published by the National Press and Publication Administration, said users under the age of 18 will only be able to play games from 8pm to 9pm on those days, according to the Xinhua news agency.

Online gaming companies will be barred from providing gaming services to them in any form outside those hours and need to ensure they have put real name verification systems in place, said the regulator, which oversees the country's video games market.

Previously, China limited the total length of time minors could access online games to three hours on holiday or 1.5 hours on other days. ...
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FULL STORY: https://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/china-cuts-online-gaming-time-100734593.html
 
ramonmercado said:
Best avoid them completely, the Devil's invention those games.
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Nah, it depends. PC/Console MMPORGs' are pretty ok. I play/played a fair amount and only put money in every so often to support the running of those games that don't have subscriptions.

Loot boxes, etc was a horrible move and some games are more exploitative than others, but it's easy to find out which ones. I reckon the mobile game industry is far worse with Clash of Clans and Candy Crush-type games are way more dangerous gambling-wise.

If I had kids playing then I'd certainly limit time and come up with an agreed amount of money that could be spent. It's a good idea for parents to know which games their kids are playing.

Remember video games were largely responsible for normalizing geekiness for males and females. That was a good thing. There was a similar uproar with dungeons and dragons and that was again made by people who didn't understand it.

There are a lot of positives to online gaming.

Online gaming can allow people to interact and via guilds and clans you can get to know some really nice people. No different from here really.
 
Naughty_Felid said:
Probably best to avoid online games for a bit the racist gleeful reaction to this is going to be unbearable.
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The Chinese regime is profoundly racist, sexist, nationalist and paranoid. Any video game that depicts say Tibet and the Tibetans as a sovereign people (WW2 game Hearts of Iron) or the Taiwanese flag will be censored in China, as will any references to LGBT people or even mild satire aimed at Chinese politics.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
The Chinese regime is profoundly racist, sexist, nationalist and paranoid. Any video game that depicts say Tibet and the Tibetans as a sovereign people (WW2 game Hearts of Iron) or the Taiwanese flag will be censored in China, as will any references to LGBT people or even mild satire aimed at Chinese politics.
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Yeah, I know that. In gaming, as you know they have a certain reputation.
 
Naughty_Felid said:
I'd disagree, treating addiction whatever it is should never be considered hopeless.
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I didn't say it's generally considered hopeless or that it should be, just that it looks that way to me. Adrenaline isn't something you can withhold from people or replace with something else.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
The Chinese regime is profoundly racist, sexist, nationalist and paranoid. Any video game that depicts say Tibet and the Tibetans as a sovereign people (WW2 game Hearts of Iron) or the Taiwanese flag will be censored in China, as will any references to LGBT people or even mild satire aimed at Chinese politics.
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…. Leaving aside the issue of what people may be chatting and messaging about.
 
escargot said:
I didn't say it's generally considered hopeless or that it should be, just that it looks that way to me. Adrenaline isn't something you can withhold from people or replace with something else.
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I definitely seem to seek an adrenaline high in anyway I can.

Think it is part of my borderline personality disorder though to have an addictive personality.

Life without an adrenaline high just isn't possible for me.
 
A mobile game I play has a global leaderboard for various tournaments and such. While you can be competitive in the groups you are assigned to (about 100-200 players) without paying, global requires spending, big spending. Based on point totals the community has estimated global winners in some tournaments spent US$ 20k+. For winning at the global level, you will get an extra bit of loot that you could get in a few hours of letting the game play itself.

I just assume those people are really rich.
 
kamalktk said:
A mobile game I play has a global leaderboard for various tournaments and such. While you can be competitive in the groups you are assigned to (about 100-200 players) without paying, global requires spending, big spending. Based on point totals the community has estimated global winners in some tournaments spent US$ 20k+. For winning at the global level, you will get an extra bit of loot that you could get in a few hours of letting the game play itself.

I just assume those people are really rich.
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Yeah, I played a Clash of Clans-type game and one player spent similar amounts of money on cooldown reduction. Again I assume some sort of secret coding or stupidly rich.
 
Nonsense.

Screenshot_20210905-033947.jpg


Courtesy of:

http://torinak.com/qaop#!hobbit

:) I shall finish my quest one day...

Been trying since I first loaded that cassette. :headbang:
 
A relative of mine was treated with talking therapy and counselling along with changing their behaviour choices because they got immersed and addicted to complex multiplayer battlefield sims for 8-10 hours a day. They're doing OK!
 
Any past-time can proceed from a 'mere' dedication to addiction.
The way I see it, some people will go too far, become 'addicted' to anything. It's part of their personality - y'know the phrase 'having an addictive personality'.
People find an outlet that serves their needs, physically or emotionally, be it physical excercise, role-playing games, shoot 'em ups, a religion, a diet ... whatever.
But some people become addicted to their past-time, for whatever reason, and can take things too far. It's not the fault of the actual activity.
 
Stormkhan said:
Any past-time can proceed from a 'mere' dedication to addiction.
The way I see it, some people will go too far, become 'addicted' to anything. It's part of their personality - y'know the phrase 'having an addictive personality'.
People find an outlet that serves their needs, physically or emotionally, be it physical excercise, role-playing games, shoot 'em ups, a religion, a diet ... whatever.
But some people become addicted to their past-time, for whatever reason, and can take things too far. It's not the fault of the actual activity.
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This is true. And throwing around the word 'addiction' in a half-humorous way - 'oh, I'm addicted to.... (jellu babies, Dr Who, comfy cushions etc) dilutes the seriousness of the actual fixation. I am ADHD and in the throes of a hyperfixation I can appear addicted to something (most recently the plot of a book I was writing, for which I wrote nearly 70,000 in four weeks, because I just could not stop_

Maybe we just need a different word, other than addiction. I find hyperfixation works well for anything that doesn't chemically alter your body to actually require the addictive substance.
 
catseye said:
This is true. And throwing around the word 'addiction' in a half-humorous way - 'oh, I'm addicted to.... (jellu babies, Dr Who, comfy cushions etc) dilutes the seriousness of the actual fixation. I am ADHD and in the throes of a hyperfixation I can appear addicted to something (most recently the plot of a book I was writing, for which I wrote nearly 70,000 in four weeks, because I just could not stop_

Maybe we just need a different word, other than addiction. I find hyperfixation works well for anything that doesn't chemically alter your body to actually require the addictive substance.
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All good points. However, the addictive substance might be one's own adrenaline.
 
escargot said:
All good points. However, the addictive substance might be one's own adrenaline.
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This is true. Although I'm not sure that comfy cushions, or even Dr Who, raise adrenaline to sufficient levels to make them addictive. I am led to believe that addiction to ones own adrenaline is why ADHD people tend towards hyperfixations.
 
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