Your Child's Addiction To Video Games Could Be A Disorder

If your child is addicted to video games, a situation also tagged as compulsive video gaming, he/she could be having a mental health condition.



This latest classification is part of an updated manual released by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday.

According to WHO, video game addiction should now officially read ‘gaming disorder’.

But it also gave conditions that would be present for such disorder to be diagnosed.

“For gaming disorder to be diagnosed, the behaviour pattern must be of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning,’’ WHO said.

It added that such behavioural pattern would normally have been evident for at least 12 months.
The formal designation of “gaming disorder” within WHO’s International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD) was welcomed by some groups as helpful to sufferers.

Others, however, saw the official designation as causing needless concern among parents.

“There are few truer snapshots of a country’s well-being than its health statistics,’’ the UN agency also said.

WHO said while broad economic indicators such as Gross Domestic Product may skew impressions of individual prosperity, data on disease and death reveal how a population is truly faring.

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