The International Classification of Diseases (ICD), the official diagnostic manual of the World Health Organization (WHO), will be updated in 2018, 28 years after it was last published. On this occasion, the WHO should officially recognize obsessive video game disorders as a mental illness, we learn in The New Scientist.
The behavior should be observed for at least one year
The chapter on gambling disorders that will be included in the future ICD-11 has yet to be finalized, but in the draft the clinician will be able to consider that a person suffers from this health disorder if he grants a increasing focus on play “to the extent that play takes precedence over other interests in life” including sleep and food. However, this behavior will need to be observed for at least a year before the diagnosis can be confirmed.
“Healthcare professionals need to recognize that gambling disorders can have serious health consequences”said Vladimir Poznyak of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse at the WHO.
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