‘Gaming’ is officially a Mental Disorder as per WHO

‘Gaming’ is officially a Mental Disorder as per WHO
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For people who are gaming all the time, this one’s for you! If you are addicted to the game such as PUBG, Fortnite, Temple Run and Candy Crush, then you might be suffering from ‘Gaming Disorder’. World Health Organization has officially added this addiction to its list of disorders. WHO recognized video-game addiction as an illness during a session at the 72nd World Health Assembly that took place from 20 to 28 May, in Geneva, Switzerland.

‘Gaming Disorder’ has been recognized under the International Classification of Diseases, which helps WHO in the classification of certain addictions into disorders. As per ICD, gaming disorder is an addictive behavior and thus been classified as a mental illness or disorder.

Now, how to tell if one is suffering from the addiction?

Well, here’s how—‘a characterized the pattern of persistent and recurring behavior, where a player begins to give priority to gaming over other daily activities and interest to a point where it begins to affect their relationships, work, and education.’

To make things more clear, here are a few traits of a person suffering from gaming disorder:
1. Excessive or total withdrawal from daily activities and relationships.
2. A time period of 12 or more months is needed to qualify for the disorder, otherwise, you have a feel-good relationship with video-games.
3. You have lost all the control over gaming. You’d choose it over anything and everything else in your life. Dude, it’s a problem!
4. Despite the negative effects of excessive gaming, you aren’t able to get rid of it, even for a few days!

If any of the above traits trigger you, it’s time to get some help!

On the other hand, here are a few characteristics of people who enjoy gaming but aren’t addicts!

  1. They use video games as therapy. Playing video-games relieves them from their stress.
  2. Gaming helps in enhancing their creativity. Many of them have reckoned that they use their brains in more creative and smarter ways after they began playing video-games.
  3. They became better problem-solvers due to their interest in gaming.
  4. They can’t play their favorite video-game for more than two hours!

So, what category do you think you belong to?
The outrage of gaming becoming a disorder came in question more because of people losing their lives in order to play PUBG. For instance, a 16-year –old boy named Furqan Qureshi died of a heart attack which was supposedly caused due to long hours of playing PUBG! If that’s not enough, there was another case where a boy drank acid instead of water, by mistake, because he was engrossed in the video-game.

Many people, especially the Video Games Coalition, are questioning the step taken by WHO. They are arguing that WHO’s decision is not based on any proper diagnosis, nor evaluation. Even though this isn’t a proper diagnosis of addiction/disease, it is enough to evaluate our deteriorating lifestyle.

However, WHO did consider many sides of the gamers, and the relationship that they shared with playing video-games, and most of them fall under WHO’s definition of mental disorders. Perhaps, we should stop finding an offense in everything that doesn’t resonate with us, and start focusing on the issues that trigger us so easily. Maybe then, we would learn to live in a better and healthy world!