There have been many debates on whether addiction to play video games is a mental disorder. The most important one was a debate at the American Medical Association’s annual meeting. Doctors discussed on a contentious proposal to designate video game addiction as a mental disorder similar to alcoholism.
However, it was concluded that video game addiction is not a mental disorder and felt that psychiatrists should study the issue more. In fact, the idea received a strong opposition from the addiction experts. They have called for more studies to be conducted on the excessive use of video and online games. As of now, this problem only affects ten percent of the gamers.
Dr. Stuart Gitlow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine and Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York says, “There is nothing here to suggest that this is a complex physiological disease state akin to alcoholism or other substance abuse disorders, and it doesn’t get to have the word addiction attached to it.”
Dr. Louis Kraus of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and a psychiatrist at Rush University Medical Center explained his apprehensions as he felt that it is not yet clear whether video games are addictive. He said in an interview, “It’s not necessarily a cause-and-effect type issue. There may be certain kids who have a compulsive component to what they are doing. The more time kids spend on video games, the less time they will have socializing, the less time they will have with their families, the less time they will have exercising. They can make up academic deficits, but they can’t make up the social ones.”
To recognize video game addiction as a mental disorder, it would need the final recommendation of AMA’s 555 voting delegates, who will vote on the matter later this week. Even the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) called for more research about the issue. ESA represents the thirty billion global video game industry. But if video game addiction is given the status of mental disorder, then it would alleviate the path for insurance coverage.