COMPULSIVELY playing video games now qualifies as a new mental health condition, the World Health Organisation has said.
In its latest revision to an international disease classification manual, the UN health agency said that classifying “Gaming Disorder” as a separate condition will “serve a public health purpose for countries to be better prepared to identify this issue”.
Dr Mark Griffiths, who has been researching the concept of video gaming disorder for 30 years, said the new classification would help legitimise the problem. “Video gaming is like a non-financial kind of gambling from a psychological point of view,” said Griffiths, a professor of behavioural addiction at Nottingham Trent University.
“Gamblers use money as a way of keeping score whereas gamers use points.”
He guessed that the percentage of video game players with a compulsive problem was likely to be extremely small – much less than 1% – and that many such people would likely have other underlying problems, like depression, bipolar disorder or autism.
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