Being addicted to video games will soon be classified as a mental health condition according to The Independent.

The WHO's eleventh global diagnostic manual is due in 2018.

Both Ferguson and Przybylski acknowledge that some people overdo gaming at the expense of their health and sanity. The 11th version of the ICD is due out in 2018, and experts have finally settled on a first draft. According to the University of Bergen, Norway study, excessive gaming is a defense mechanism to cope with an underlying psychiatric disorder.

The World Health Organization's bold move might be what solidifies "gaming disorder" as a recognized, diagnosable, and actionable thing.

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A World Health Organization spokesperson pointed to the prevalence of gaming. While this may not have caused too many problems back in the arcade era as, eventually, a player would simply run out of quarters, the rapid development of home consoles has kept a generation of kids and adults glued to their controllers. According to Forbes, "video games can be a safe way of improving hand-eye coordination, enhancing problem-solving abilities, relieving stress, connecting people, and living out fantasies". Declaring that the proposal had "fundamental issues" like poor research quality and a lack of consensus, the paper warned that a rushed decision could have bad consequences.

Gaming only becomes a problem if it impairs a person's personal, social, educational, and other aspects of life.

The beta draft guidance mentions that video game playing, either offline or online, must be "normally evident over a period of at least 12 months" for this diagnosis to be made. Would you choose gaming over spending time with family and friends? The WHO did not specify how many hours classifies as "excessive", and there isn't yet a specified treatment. He explained that, early in psychologists' debates about gaming addiction, some compared apparent victims' compulsive behaviors to substance abusers'.

Originally founded in 1948, the World Health Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations, aims to "build a better, healthier future" with their involvement in worldwide public health across the globe.

Because to this, the W.H.O. will seemingly be officially recognizing Gaming Disorder as a medical condition in the coming year. The analysis, which appeared in the American Journal of Psychiatry revealed that around 3 percent of people playing video game turn their hobby into an addiction.