EXTREME GAMING COULD BE A THING ...

THE potential risks that come with obsessively playing video games have been coming to light in recent years, but for the first time gaming may soon be classified as an actual mental health condition.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has listed “gaming disorder” in theirits recent draft of the 2018 International Classification of Diseases(ICD-11), which was last updated 27 years ago in 1990.

Criteria include:

● Impaired control over gaming, for example onset, frequency, intensity, duration, termination. ● Increasing priority given to gaming, to the extent that gaming takes priority over other interests

● Continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences.

Being added into the ICD-11 will mean that gaming disorder will become an official health diagnosis that can be used by doctors, health care workers, and insurance companies.

It also states that the obsession with playing video games would be severe enough to have significant negative effects on “personal, family, social, educational, (and) occupational” relationships.

Between 2004 and 2007, men aged between 21 and 30 years old played two hours of video games per week, but that has now risen to 3.4 hours per week according to the report. Ally Foster