World Health Organization Goes Forward with "Gaming Disorder" Classification

Way back at the very tail end of last year, the World Health Association found itself on the receiving end of some unhappy campers when it was discovered they had submitted something called “Gaming Disorder” into a list of officially recognized mental diseases. Both the ESA and a series of health professionals protested the inclusion, and that was the end of it… but now the WHO has once again submitted a “Gaming Disorder” into the healthcare vernacular, with a slightly updated definition.

“Gaming Disorder” is called an addiction where:

"a pattern of gaming behavior ('digital-gaming' or 'video-gaming') characterized by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences."

Now, that’s still not a great definition, and doesn’t really solve the problems of the first definition. And, as before, the ESA and some friends have leaped to the defense of video games:

“Videogames across all kinds of genres, devices and platforms are enjoyed safely and sensibly by more than 2 billion people worldwide, with the educational, therapeutic, and recreational value of games being well-founded and widely recognized. We are therefore concerned to see ‘gaming disorder’ still contained in the latest version of the WHO’s ICD-11 despite significant opposition from the medical and scientific community. The evidence for its inclusion remains highly contested and inconclusive.”

Saying “video games can be good so they can’t ever be bad” is a pretty weak defense, but the ESA’s not strictly wrong: the main problem the old health professionals had was that there was nothing unique about “Gaming Disorder” that couldn’t reasonably apply to any non-substance addiction. Or, to put it another way, “Gaming” was the symptom, not the source of the problem. The new definition does not address that.

Still, this new definition also isn’t final: that won’t happen until early next year. So it’s not too late for WHO to change their mind… although they sure are persistent about it, aren’t they?