WHO classifies "Gaming Disorder" as a mental condition - Sensationalist Headlines

These really aren't typical video games however. But sure, this could be promising however I will still say that there are a lot of behavioral methods of treating ADHD, but they often aren't effective without a combination of therapy & drugs. (even if drugs are utilized short-term.) There's pretty good evidence that both points in the direction of ADHD being underdiagnosed and undertreated, and also it being overdiagnosed as well. Whether it's overdiagnosed or underdiagnosed is frankly something I'll leave to psychiatrists instead of forming my own opinion on it since the evidence doesn't make it easy. In general in medicine they have to strike a balance between potential harms of treatment and potential harms of non-treatment, and ADHD drugs carry pretty low risk and procedure suggests that they're optimally used short term, and receive periodic evaluations to figure out whether they're still needed (<50% ADHD persists into adulthood.) However, in America these can get quite expensive so.... ehhhhh. Also, more and more doctors now are starting out with attempting behavioral solutions, before moving on to drugs, especially for mild cases. Also, I don't necessarily disagree with you that in the end, it is up to the person to manage and overcome their disorders, but in practice this is pretty difficult to get people to achieve. Often drugs prove to be very necessary, at the very least in the short-term while somebody develops healthy methods of management (which is hard to do while your life is being ruined by whatever you got.)

I never blamed video games - I just saying it cannot be ignored that video games have a potential in being very addictive to the right (or wrong type of) mentality. I was just point out people need to stop feeling personally attacked, just because you play video games doesn't mean you have a disorder. There are a combination of factors and video games play a part in that. Never once did I say anything that was close to a knee-jerk feel good fix for helping people. All I'm saying it is important to recognize various disorders so they can be better understood and get more effective treatments. I never once stripped people of their own accountability, I simply pointed out that not everyone has the ability to "do better" as you put without any type of explanation or context. It just makes you come off as arrogant, I'm sure there was a lot more to your situation then "do better." If not, you should write a self-help book so people can just think their way out of their problems. What did you do when you defeated addiction? I highly doubt you just lifted yourself from your bootstraps and magically got over it. Did you have a support system? Did you seek medical help? Did you have anyone helping educate you while you worked hard? Some people need a system that helps them figure out their issue - deep or superficial and support them with a plan of action. Not everyone can do it on their own. All I'm saying is people need to stop acting like they're being labeled because they play video games. There are people out there who have real addiction issues and video games practically controls their life. That type of disorder needs to be recognized so it can be studied and people can get help they need. These types of studies are relatively new and not all addiction is the same.

I'm not saying you shouldn't seek help to overcome addiction. But the core of the issue is personal responsibility. Yes tools like methodone can help a heroine addict overcome the worst segments of their withdrawl but they aren't going to make that person sober. You know what will? That person's own will power, and drive.

You seem focused on one aspect that ultimately doesn't seem very useful to focus on when it comes to helping people get better. And I'm not even exactly referring to just drugs, therapy and exercises in controlled environments are huge too. A lot of "self-control" issues, such as unwanted pregnancies, only ever wind up being dealt with on a large-scale by other means (birth control for this 1.)

That's what disorders are dude what

That doesn't seem terribly related Look, I don't know what to say. I'm not going to make any fucking headway telling you that the only way to stay sober is to control yourself, that a lot of things come down to being in control of yourself. So, don't. Do whatever, blame it on whoever you want and be absolved of everything. I don't see you making any effort to understand my point of view, I know I'm trying to understand yours though.

I'm not saying that you're against birth control. I'm giving an example of what was ultimately a self-control issue in most cases that couldn't be really dealt with by telling people to get a grip on their behavior.

Either people are automatons just doing what ever their biologically wired to do and free will doesn’t exist and all of these issues are irrelevant or we have free will to some degree and have a considerable amount of control to exert over our own choices in most circumstances, and personal responsibility matters I find our culture is doing its damndest to eliminate any trace of personal responsibility, and I think that’s a very very bad thing. Were alaves to our biology in many many ways but our will power and our role as active agents shouldn’t be dismissed. I’m not trying to say everything in your life is your fault, but like addiction or pregnancy saying that you didn’t play a part in the decision making process isn’t correct(aside from horrifying and extenuating circumstances).

I don't particularly care about the morality behind it and whether free will exists or not because ultimately it doesn't matter. I care about what gives results and what can consistently improve peoples lives from the medical perspective. In a way, most therapy targets self-control anyways (CBT.) But they do it with the view that it's a skill that it needs cultivated and molded.

I'm saying that I've gone through the rest of my life afterwards not having any problems or even any semblance of what you would call ADHD after being taken off Adderall. The problems you may still be experiencing today could be a part of the fact that if you do take prescription pills, they could factor into all of that. Especially if you've been on them long-term. But I don't know if you are or aren't on Adderall.

You may have simply grown out of your ADHD, or had symptoms but not the characteristic pathophysiology and were behind the curve maturity-wise for awhile, etc.. You wanna be p. careful when generalizing your case to others.

Quite frankly adhd in adults is underdiagnosed and there have been a handful of studies that support that. In my eyes this is because how the symptoms present themselves may change, based primarily on enviromental factors (ie highly structured environment, getting jobs that cater to strengths, regular medication usage, etc...), but they still persist in some form. It's very similar to how its being realized that ADHD is underidagnosed in women as well, primarily because the symptoms are displayed differently in women.

I don't necessary disagree (adult ADHD criteria are... controversial) but what I cited was based on people who were given the diagnosis as a kid, but whose symptoms didn't persist with them into adulthood. These figures may not exactly be directly linked.

again, that's usually because of environmental factors (such as a job that plays to an individual's strengths) or a change in how the symptoms are actually presenting themselves. There has been research that shows that even if it seems like you "grown out of it", your brain still has lasting impacts (which means you didn't grow out of it, but rather your symptoms changed). >Working memory impairments were present in adulthood in people diagnosed with ADHD in adolescence, even if formal diagnostic criteria are no longer met. The group differences we observed in working memory were not simply secondary to the ADHD group failing to engage in the task, as even when we excluded poor performers and limited to the analysis to participants who were scoring correct answers on the vast majority of trials, correct answers were still significantly less than in controls. Consistent with the working memory performance abnormalities observed in adults diagnosed with ADHD in adolescence, we also showed that caudate activation during task performance was abnormal. Whilst we found load-dependent working memory activation in both left and right caudate in controls, there was no load-dependent activation in the adolescence ADHD group. Load-dependent activation in the right caudate predicted working memory performance in controls but not in patients.

The statistics and citations are relatively weak in that paper (ofc, this is to be expected with neurosci being p. difficult to do. doesn't make it useless) Though, yeah, that'll apply for some. I tried to be careful in stating that the figures may not exactly be directly linked, because I'm sure in some cases they are, but there will also be cases where people are diagnosed with ADHD based on symptoms who do not truly have particular brain structure abnormalities, who wind up improving later.

I find it difficult to believe that someone who has a disorder that is likely caused by differences in the physical brain itself wouldn't have those differences. one of the biggest studies to look at differences in adhd brains vs neurotypical brains discovered that adhd brains are statistically smaller in overall size and in 5 key areas that impact the behaviors that are adhd.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19020513 For one, diagnostic standards make an exceptionally massive difference. Are four times the amount of people coming out of nowhere? (DSM vs. ICD diagnostics.) And there are other issues such as how the younger you are relative to your classmates, the more likely you are to fit the criteria. This suggests a temporary issue in a large amount of people to me. Statistical tendencies don't give you everybody.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/atypical-brain-development-observed-preschoolers-adhd-symptoms An even more recent NIH study suggesting again that ADHD brains are literally physically different from neurotypical brains. it's not just in size either, another example is how the brain actually deals with dopamine. adhd is characterized by actual differences in the brain from neurotypical ones. there is no way for someone to have adhd and their brain be "normal" as adhd symptoms are caused by the differences.

I'm not claiming that ADHD brains do not have different physical tendencies. The issue is that given what I've linked, you can't throw out socioenvironmental factors leading to issues for all cases. Most mental disorders have a plurality of potential causes behind individual cases. That's something doctors wind up having to sort out when treating people.

you're missing the forest for the trees. it's been demonstrated pretty overwhelmingly that there is a genetic link (although what genes specifically haven't entirely been determined), and while some have suggested that enviromental factors (such as exposure to chemicals involved in the creation of plastics) could play a role, evidence is much more scarce.

That's a load of bollocks, and while I have issues with adderall/ritalin/etc being dashed out for any hyperactivity, I think it's fucking daffy to suggest that games can intrinsically cure or manage your condition

This feels needlessly specific. Is there a particular cause to consider someone who is addicted to video games as distinct from, say, someone who is addicted to social media? I'm trying to be open minded to this because obviously this is a gaming forum, of course we're gonna' be resistant to the idea, but I don't really see anything in the classification that necessitates this as a thing specific to video games as opposed to other mediums.

The big thing with gaming is that it can easily be an isolated behavior. The positive feedback loop is all ingame - you spend hours at part of game, reward is also in the game. Although there are outside factors (e.g. playing multiplayer competitions, comparing achievements) the game lets you get lost in the sauce without the need for external approval. Work/school/social events do not have tangible, measurable rewards in the immediate and easily measurable way that video games do. If you bust your ass for eight hours in the cubicle, you may not feel as if you've done anything besides move papers from one filing cabinet to another. If you bust your ass for eight hours in Saints Row 3, you've probably gathered a lot of cash, recruited buddies, upgraded your arsenal, unlocked achievements - an easy "sense of pride and accomplishment", if you will. But you can ignore personal IRL things, more or less. Social media is different because it's less rigid. Games are effectively binary - did you win or did you not. Constantly fishing for like/comment/subscribe goals is certainly game-like, but is less rigid and often self-imposed I'd say the implicit need for interpersonal interaction (manipulation?) changes it into something more like codependency or similar emotional issues. It can be simplified to a need to be liked or a need to be recognized as successful, while gaming is more of an individual urge to 'git gud' or unlock 'em all. (this is armchair analysis/talking-out-of-ass but I have struggled with behaviors like gaming addiction and social anxiety/codependency in the past fwiw)

10 years ago I would have said that this was stupid, but actually, I think there really is a problem with modern game design that needs to be examined in this regard. I don't think it's any secret that recently big publishers especially have been pushing psychologically exploitative game design more and more. Turning every game into a monetizable skinner box seems to be an increasingly common trend. This is a very real problem that I think does need to be seriously examined. Games are being deliberately designed to keep people playing even at times when they don't actually want to and aren't having fun. This kind of irresponsible, manipulative game design is genuinely destructive to people's lives and we need to do something about it.

There's something to be said for the immersion of games. I've never encountered someone talking about movies or books in the first person (i.e. "I defeated the Joker in The Dark Knight") but talking about games in first-person is commonplace ("I defeated the Joker in Arkham Asylum"). Not to belittle gaming, all you did was sit down and press buttons at the right time until the computer box played a video of a man falling down, and of course you know that games are fiction, but the art and craft put into the game combined with the necessity of player interaction makes your brain light up in different ways than finishing a movie.

??? The reason people say that doesn't have to anything to do with immersion, it has to do with the fact that one was interactive (i.e. you actually did do it) and the other was not.

Yeah, that's my entire point. Watching movies and playing video games are very different methods of media consumption, so it's disingenuous to say "what makes this different from someone who listens to music all day?"

It already existed as Bibliomania

Don't we all have a "gaming disorder" though, seeing as we watch screens on a regular basis these days? lol

Only further proof that gamers are the most oppressed group in all of society /s